Facebook acquired the facial-recognition startup Face.com in 2012.
Face.com announced the acquisition on June 18, 2012, making 2012 the correct year. The Israeli company, founded in 2009 in Tel Aviv, developed facial-recognition technology for photographs uploaded through websites and mobile applications. Its systems could detect faces and connect them with social-network information.
Before the acquisition, Face.com had built Facebook applications including Photo Finder, which helped users locate untagged pictures of themselves and friends, and Photo Tagger, which supported bulk tagging of faces in uploaded photos. The company also offered an application programming interface that developers could use for facial-recognition features.
Reports estimated the deal’s value at roughly $55 million to $60 million, although the final amount was not officially disclosed. Facebook later continued developing facial-recognition research under projects including DeepFace. The year can be confused with later work involving Facebook’s photo-tagging and face-recognition systems, but the acquisition itself was announced in 2012.