Facial recognition for social media – creepy or creative? A Tennessee-based ad agency is banking on the fact that its new platform called Facedeals will be useful enough for fans to overcome their hesitation of facial recognition technology.

Employing cameras and facial recognition scanning, Facedeals automatically checks in a patron to a location on Facebook and then texts personalized deals to his or her smartphone. Based on the idea that Facebook check-ins are an extremely valuable function, albeit underused by businesses and consumers alike, Facedeals strives to make checking in at locations easier in addition to making the deals consumers get more enticing.

http://vimeo.com/47133014#

Despite its namesake, Facedeals is not directly affiliated with Facebook at this point, and the social site’s users still have to opt in to the platform and create an account through their Facebook profiles to cash in on the deals.

After user backlash, congressional scrutiny and even an investigation by the European Union, Facebook halted its efforts to use and expand facial recognition technology on its site. But, when the site does decide to employ facial recognition technologies again (which we all know it will), Facedeals could prove to be a very valuable asset – and in more ways then one.

If Facedeals incorporates with Facebook and becomes widely used, the data alone the platform will be collecting on each of its users will be extremely valuable to Facebook, businesses, advertisers and search engines. Which, all leads me back to my first question: Facedeals – creepy or creative?

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