Facebook, Find Me Something? Facebook Buys Speech Recognition Provider

Watching Facebook lately has been like watching an ant hill. Something is clearly going on within the depths of the social media network — too much has been happening for there not to be — but the overall purpose seems somewhat obscured. The picture just got a bit more interesting with a recent agreement wherein Facebook agreed to buy Pittsburgh-based Mobile Technologies.

While the exact terms of the agreement weren't disclosed, it's worth noting that Mobile Technologies is a developer of products related to speech recognition technology, tech which is recognized as an increasingly useful way to navigate the Web and related products. Perhaps the most recognized product from Mobile Technologies is Jibbigo, a translator application geared toward mobile devices.

Taking this development and combining it with several others makes for some very interesting possibilities. While Jibbigo's success as a translator isn't exactly the greatest — watching it translate a lecture on the fly from German to English brought some rather interesting syntax, including: “And now we are supposed to actually also still a heavy average studies conduct in this environment.” -- it's still doing some very impressive work. That translation appeared bare seconds after the original German dialogue was delivered. Granted, it's limping, but it's there, and it's a lot more understandable than most anyone would get that hasn't been studying German for years. Due to its multinational presence, Favebook would welcome something like this; the ability to speak to someone using another language -- and having a translation roll underneath the speech -- would be very valuable.

But it's more than just translation that's potentially on tap. Consider what would happen if Facebook went Siri; we may well reach a point where we can ask Facebook for things. There are few things that aren't, in one way or another, currently on Facebook: restaurants, retailers, movie theaters, all of these and more can be found with Facebook pages, sometimes even offering up special deals for users or even — as is currently under development in a reported arrangement with OpenTable— restaurant reservations. Will there be a day where we can open up Facebook and say, “Facebook, book me a table at Snooty Restaurant for two, 7:30 tonight” and actually have it done? This may well be a Siri competitor, and one open to the world outside of Apple devices.

Facebook, during the second quarter, reached a particularly exciting milestone as it reached 1.15 billion users. Though there are reports which note the time the average user is spending on the site is down somewhat, measures like this may well be opening up the field to get users to stick around a little longer by dint of giving said users more to do. Consider further how deeply the two concepts could be linked; already businesses put a lot of information — hours of operation, items available for purchase, directions and the like — on Facebook pages as part of marketing efforts. What if that information were accessible to voice controls, with “Facebook, how late is The Yarn Barn in St. Louis open tonight?” a viable and useful control mechanism?

This is largely conjecture, naturally, as Facebook has only recently agreed to make the deal in the first place, let alone get it into something resembling operation. But something like this has some very exciting potential uses, and may well give Facebook a needed shot in the arm to turn it from social media toy to indispensable tool of information delivery.