The sophisticated technology developed by the company, which has had business links with Facebook for several years, could help users to receive suggestions about tagging friends after uploading images from their mobiles.

Gil Hirsch, Face.com's chief executive, has written on the company blog that the deal fits with their mission to "make face recognition a fun, engaging part of people's lives".

There remain worries however, that Facebook's move towards more sophisticated technology could reignite complaints about the site's privacy settings and Graham Cluely at the internet security firm Sophos has warned of the dangers of "sharing personal information by default".

Although full details of the deal remain undisclosed, it is believed that the social networking site will acquire all of Face.com's employees.