Hitachi launches GazoPa app for Facebook

Image matching software gets social networking debut

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11 December 2008 17:32 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Hitachi has released "GazoPa book" a new Facebook application that enables users to search for images using image recognition tech. The service will work both inside Facebook and on the web.

What's particularly interesting about this release is that the full version of GazoPa as a web image search engine is currently in private beta release, so this will give Facebookers a sneak preview of the service.

GazoPa book will allow users to find images that are similar to their profile photo or pics in their albums as well as images similar to their friend's profile pic and albums.

GazoPa can search for images that have not been tagged by using image features such as colour and a shape to match similar pics rather than relying on accurate text descriptions.

In a translated press release Hitachi suggests "users may sympathize with other users who have similar images. Images can be go-between in the users".

Slightly dubious privacy issues aside, Hitachi choosing Facebook for a release is significant, as it is the first version of GazoPa created for a third party platform.