Facebook closing Face.com APIs and Klik app

Shawn Knight

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Staff member

Facebook acquired facial recognition technology company Face.com last month in a deal that was rumored to be valued around $100 million. The social network is already making headway with the new purchase by closing some of the key products from the 2007 startup, presumably to begin integrating features directly into Facebook.

Zuckerberg and company are shutting down the facial recognition APIs used by Face.com over the next 30 days, much to the displeasure of developers that used the APIs. These partners have taken to Twitter and Hacker News to voice their opinions, most of which aren’t terribly pleasant. After all, it was only a few weeks ago that these same developers were told that the company would continue to support them.

In addition to the APIs, Klik has also been removed from the App Store. This app allowed users to automatically tag their friends in photos uploaded to Facebook and had roughly 40,000 active monthly Facebook users. Klik users have until July 20 to download any content store within the app at which time the company will dispose of any and all data; it won’t simply be migrated to Facebook.

Face.com doesn’t rule out the possibility of working with developers in the future as part of Facebook’s developer network, however.

In the meantime, developers are looking elsewhere for alternative facial recognition APIs. The Next Web highlights this API from Lambda Labs as an early frontrunner although it’s still in private beta at this point.

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