Last year, Apple purchased Swedish facial recognition firm Polar Rose for $22 million, and yesterday’s iPhone 4S announcement revealed that the technology is now baked into iOS and is touted as one of big new camera features. The iPhone is now a compact camera and mobile computer that can detect — and possibly recognize — faces.
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Here’s some nerdy news: Israeli facial recognition startup Face.com has just opened up its API, allowing developers to integrate its facial recognition technology in third-party websites and applications. Since launching a year ago, the company has scanned more than 7 billion photos and tagged more than 52 million faces through its Photo Finder and Photo Tagger applications on Facebook.

Now, the technology is no longer limited to Facebook, as any third-party developer can integrate facial recognition into their own apps. The API uses a REST-like interface similar to Twitter’s API, and takes in URLs to photos.

I’m interested in seeing what kind of creative applications developers can come up with. They’ve post a few example apps already using the API, and there’s talk of upcoming facial recognition augmented reality apps.