New App Uses Facial Recognition to Personalize Your Discounts — Does That Scare You?
- Posted on August 14, 2012 at 2:57pm by
Liz Klimas
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(Image: Redpepper/Vimeo screenshot)
Tailoring discounts based on a specific person’s preferences is nothing new. Several apps use smartphone check-ins and Facebook to help facilitate these deals but a new app undergoing beta testing in Nashville, Tenn., is taking the tech a step further. “FaceDeals” is experimenting with deals at area restaurants and stores using cameras and facial recognition.
AllFacebook.com describes how the app, created by the marketing and advertising firm Redpepper, works:
Local businesses install cameras with facial-recognition technology, which automatically check in Facebook users who are detected, and subsequently notify them of available deals at the businesses based on their like histories.
Users must authorize the Facedeals application in order to take part, and the app verifies their appearance by analyzing their most recent tagged photos. Deals are delivered to those users’ smartphones.
(Image: Redpepper/Vimeo screenshot)
According to Redpepper’s website, the app was create to help businesses better utilize Facebook’s check-in tool to reward loyal customers:
A search for businesses with active deals in our area turned up a measly six offers. The odds we’ll ever be at one of those six spots are low (a strip club and photography studio among them), and the incentives for a check-in are not nearly enticing enough for us to take the time. So we set out to evolve the check-in and sweeten the deal, making both irresistible. We call it Facedeals.
Watch the app in action:
This third-party app uses custom cameras, open source technologies and existing data to identify you. Once its test phase is complete, the company says it plans to roll out the technology in businesses worldwide.
What do you think of using facial recognition technology for personalized deals? Let us know in the comments below.
(H/T: Daily Mail)
Comments (17)
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epicwinofgod
Posted on August 19, 2012 at 4:18amPersonally, I would rather not be scanned like a piece of inventory. Customer service to me is more valuable than automation because not having to do things yourself in general seems to be the cause of poor interest in education and a lacking work ethic. The less required of you the lazier you become.
People need jobs and should use their heads for things we don’t need technology for. What will we do when everything is automated and we find ourselves with nothing but time? Then what? Think about it. We‘re endangering the very jobs that lie in marketing when a computer simply sorts your interests and past purchases and forms together offers based what’s most likely to sell.
Each time something is made more effecient, someone gets shafted. Making more money for less people is unethical and that’s all this software would do in the long run. How many web developers like myself are out of work from free software like WordPress? I say we slow down on certain technologies until the economy is balanced. Just because we have it doesn’t mean we should use it.
Report Post »Silversmith
Posted on August 15, 2012 at 4:19pmNope. Nobody gets to see the Wizard!! Not nobody, not no how!!
Silversmith
Report Post »texasderek
Posted on August 15, 2012 at 12:52pmThese sheeple will give up their freedoms for anything… what a bunch of mindless morons.
Report Post »DRAGONSEED
Posted on August 15, 2012 at 5:53amPeople are idiots for giving up every ounce of privacy. It will come back to bite them (us) in the behind.
Report Post »epicwinofgod
Posted on August 19, 2012 at 4:22amYeah.. like the day everyone in the world becomes part of a reality TV show. It already true tv with the best of people acting like fools by fighting, stealing and causing mischief. Though entertaining, where do we draw the line?
Report Post »freedomisasfreedomdoes
Posted on August 15, 2012 at 12:05amtoo much intrusion
Report Post »cosmic dogma
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 10:36pmWow, that is sooo creepy.
Report Post »Melika
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 8:25pmSo, the government won’t have to implement face recognition or tracking software, we’ll all gladly step inline simply to save a few bucks at an overpriced store.
Report Post »Constantine Ivanov
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 7:05pmTechnology doesn’t scare me. Only those who use and only how it is used might scare me
Report Post »ccprotect
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 5:22pmHe!! NO.
Report Post »TEXASGRANNY73
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 10:18pmHell No. My thoughts exactly. Seems set for lawsuits all over the place. However we have already given up our privacy to grocery stores, airlines and even food chains want your area code or phone number. I NEVER answer the phone exception those who I trust. Even so unknown, political parties, some businesses,number more than personal calls. Like trash mail-never read that garbage AARP wastes their members money by sending me garbage for years. Are they stupid or what? Or are we because we did not protest?
Report Post »forthepeople
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 5:06pmProfiling ? Isn’t that Profiling ?
Report Post »or
Do as I say not as I Do ?
randy
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 4:38pmWell, I’ve decided not to spend my money in shops that take my photo and track me when I enter their establishment.
Report Post »expatinontariocanada
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 4:25pmHow about running facial recognition software on the two widely distributed photos of James Holmes, the one of him from university and the one from his mug shot? Take a good look at the two noses side by side in those photos. I contend it’s not the same person and would love for someone to prove me wrong maybe by sharing when in the recent past he got a nose job.
Report Post »TexasHunter
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 4:24pmMan is Man’s worst enemy. Plain and simple.
Report Post »blanco5
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 4:20pmWas the narrator of the video stoned?
Report Post »blanco5
Posted on August 14, 2012 at 4:16pmWhat could POSSIBLY go WRONG?
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