If you’ve been catching up with Mark Zuckerberg lately, he announced that he would build an AI assistant for his house that is reminiscent of Jarvis from Iron Man as his new year resolution. Yesterday, he decided to take a break from coding that AI assistant to debut his newest acquisition: Masquerade.
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/vb.4/10102701352035661/?type=2&theater
Why did Facebook decide to buy Masquerade? Well, back in 2013, WSJ published a report that Snapchat had rejected a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. The company was registering a high growth and it made sense for the search giant to acquire it due to its unique features like disappearing chats and fun filters.
Facebook still wants to be at the centre of the filter craze and that is why they bought Instagram for a cool $1 billion. There are other companies that offer filters in their apps and Masquerade is one of them. Masquerade is a very popular app on iOS and currently on beta on Android where it tracks your face and adds a live filter on it. You can take photos while using the live filters or also take videos of you goofing off with the filters. This is reminiscent of Snapchat lenses feature where you can add live filters while taking a selfie.
This is probably why Facebook bought it and they announced the move on their blog. “Within Facebook, we’re going to be able to reach people at a scale like never before..” their CEO Eugene Nevgen says on their blog. “While we will be partnering with Facebook to integrate our technology, the app will stay up and running so you’ll continue to record fun selfies and keep using the product.”
