Facebook Shuts Down Face.com APIs and KLIK App

In June, Face.com announced that Facebook has acquired them. Now Facebook finally kills their service.

To briefly explain Face.com, it is a service that is known for its facial recognition IP. In June, Face.com was acquired by Facebook for around $80 to $100 million dollars. Face.com also owns the KLIP app in the App Store till Facebook purchased the startup and removed their app from the App Store.

When Face.com was acquired by Facebook, Face.com founder Gil Hirsch announced detail plans for the service, in which includes continuing the service.

“Now, lots of developers use Face.com technology to power various apps and make wonderful products. We love you guys, and the plan is to continue to support our developer community. If there are new developments you can expect to hear from us here, on the developer blog, and through our developer newsletter.”

Well that plan is going a different direction. According to Next Web, Face.com sent out an email telling developers using the service that they are shutting down the service in a month.

“We’re excited to move forward to work with all our friends at Facebook. Part of this process includes closing down other products and services that we are no longer able to support, and this includes the Face.com developers API.”

Of course, this has angered many developers. Face.com switched from saying that they plan to continue the service to them shutting down the service. Reports show that “tens of thousands of engineers have signed up for developer tokens to build face recognition products we could never have thought of ourselves,” since the release of the API back in 2010.

It also seems that Facebook will not be interested in putting the API to developers as they will mostly use the service for themselves, though if many developers that are using the API email them to keep the API open, it may be possible that Face.com will change their minds and keep it open.