Facebook has closed down Face.com, the facial recognition app it bought last month for $60m, removing it from the iPhone app store in the process.
The move continues Facebook’s trend of closing down companies that it acquires, having shut down location based service Gowalla in a similar fashion earlier this year.
Face.com has announced on its website that it is closing down its existing products and services to external developers and delivering its iPhone app so that it can focus on new products at Facebook.
The company, which was founded in 2007 by CEO Gil Hirsch, CTO Yaniv Taigman, chairman Moti Shniberg, and director Eden Shochat, said that its KLIK facial technology app has been removed from the iOS app store and offers users the opportunity to download their data before the app is shut down. KLIK, which was launched at the start of 2012, had allowed uses to tag photos directly from friends Facebook pages.
The closing down of Face.com is no major surprise. In previous acquisitions by Facebook, the company’s senior management has been transferred to Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California and all independent activities have been halted including use of an independent brand.
With the exception of the very large acquisition of Instagram, Facebook has closed down all the other companies it bought.
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As the article states, this isn’t much of a surprise as a post-IPO Facebook tries to get their stuff squared away. A publically-traded Facebook doesn’t have the leisure to dabble and experiment as they once did and with a little luck they might even begin to clean up some of the spam and bogus notifications that have become rampant on their platform.