Face.com made a splash when it launched Photo Finder it’s first Facebook app back in March. The app employed some pretty impressive facial recognition that scanned Facebook photo albums to discover untagged photos of users and their friends. Even though it was labeled an ‘Alpha’ release the app worked remarkably well, identifying individuals in photos impaired by bad lighting, low resolution and obstructions such as sunglasses. Since its launch Photo Finder has scanned more than 1.5 billion photos, identifying more than 2.3 million faces—not too shabby at all.
Today Face.com goes a step further by launching another Facebook application called Photo Tagger, which harnesses the company’s core facial recognition technology and gives it a productivity spin: bulk name tagging made easy.
We have 300 invites to give away, but be warned, Photo Tagger falls squarely into the “time vampire” category—so don’t say we didn’t warn you. Get your invite here.
The purpose of Photo Tagger is a simple one, to speed-up tagging of faces in Facebook photo albums. While ideal for users that upload large amounts of photos, it’s also a perfect fit for plain users that are just too lazy to add the name tag meta-layer. You know who you are folks…
Luckily, no matter what category of user you fall under, Photo Tagger is a snap to use and much like Photo Finder, works really well. You begin by selecting an album which can either be your own or that of your friends’. You can both browse for an album, or search by username or for a keyword featured in an album title (i.e. birthday, vacation, bar, etc.). That’s when the facial recognition kicks in and the app will begin its attempt to recognize individual faces. All of this happens pretty fast and by my testing took no longer than 30 seconds, even on albums with over a hundred photos.
Once scanning is complete, Photo Tagger presents a results page with a summary header that displays stats regarding the tagging progress, and a “Save to Facebook” button (more on this in a moment). The Faces view below the summary displays faces grouped by similarity—both ones the app was able to recognize and those it could not. There’s also an “Ungrouped” section on the bottom with faces that the app could not match to others.
Now it’s time for the productivity aspect to kick-in. There are a couple of ways to accept or change the photo tags: The first, in a sweeping manner that applies to the entire group, performed by selecting the Approve or Change All buttons. The second, by dealing with each photo individually using buttons overlaid upon each thumbnail.
Back to the “Save to Facebook” button. All approved Photo Tagger tags can be turned into official Facebook tags. The condition however is that it must be accepted by the album owner. If the current user isn’t the owner, a request is sent asking the owner approve the tag. This by the way is standard stuff enabled through Facebook’s APIs.
When a tag is accepted through Photo Tagger its thumbnail’s frame will go green. If and when it’s accepted as an official Facebook tag, a small Facebook logo will appear in the corner of the thumbnail. All of this is pretty clear when used in the app.
Face.com’s CEO Gil Hirsch explains that Photo Tagger is a result of his team’s ability to add new face-clustering technology on top of their core facial recognition. He went on to tell me that with each album scanned, Photo Tagger will get better at identifying faces already tagged.
Looks really great. I’m gonna check it out.
One step closer to the totally transparent citizen.
Good luck with that.
I love it actually.
just tried it! it rocks!
I like this!
Just tried it. Blown away.
It identified people completely out of focus, and even from partial bits of their head.
Phenomenal.
same here. impressive
It does work really well, I’ve been registered before it went live. The facial recognition is very very well done.
I hope I knew Suzan Hope
Awesome product !
The only thing I’d like to see is to have Photo Finder data imported.
I’ve spent a good amount of time in it tagging people, and it would be nice to just press a button in there that said “Apply to Facebook”
This is a very good tool. I agree with Dillon above, it would make it way easier.
Only problem is that it seems to allow me to tag the same photo with the a particular person more than once.
Hi Roi,
This is the best product I’ll try it.
I am posting this comment here so you tech newshounds can dig up more.
Is there a New Facebook Worm unleashed out there?- I googled blogs/news and FB blogs and could not find any info.
Anyone seeing this – a sudden rise in facebook status messages that look phishy- they all have variations of asking a question about watching the movie ET . I started to see this in the past 24hrs on my network.
Some sample status updates from my network:
I wonder if anyone thinks I should watch E.T.
Taking it easy. Does anyone think I should watch E.T.?
Taking it easy. Should I watch E.T.?
Yep, I’ll try it too.
How does his differ from Polar Rose’s offering? I think they’ve been up on facebook for a few months? now.
Hi Andrew,
This is Gil, CEO of Face.com, the creators of PhotoTagger
The core differences between Face.com products and other players in this field are in the technology. face.com’s tech recognizes on mass, and does it fast, without requiring users to upload/import/export photos to our services. So what that means to you, and other PhotoTagger users is a great, up and running right out of the gate, user experience. You can immediately begin tagging photos, no waiting, no delays waiting for our technology to “catch up”. Of course we’re still ironing out bugs and we’d love to get your feedback – give it a go!
Feel free to contact me directly at gil@face.com, would love to hear what you think!
Isn’t this a bit of a privacy violation? Not that I have any compromising photos or anything (unless an evening at the opera counts as “scandalous”), but I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to “tag me” on Facebook without my permission or prior knowledge.
I truly think the net is becoming way TOO OPEN. And it makes users like myself not want to be a part of it.
On Facebook, even if you set your own pictures to “private” or only viewable to friends, if you’re tagged in a photo, the public (including the press) can always access your photos. I find that disturbing.
Thanks for yet another reason to stay away from Facebook.
Cool feature…. but curious to know what the accuracy ratio of this technology.
How it ensure that its not going to tag someone elses pictures ???
wow this thing is SUPER convenient!
FidgitGidgit, Photo Tagger itself introduces no privacy concerns. Functionally, there is no difference between Photo Tagger tagging a face, and a person manually tagging a face without any suggestions. In essence, if I obtain a photo of you, and you are my Facebook friend, I have the ability to tag you whether you like it or not.
Rahul, both face.com applications allow a user to manually review suggested tags before they are accepted, which means that the ultimate accuracy of the application rests with the manual reviewer. If a face.com application thinks that a particular picture is a picture of Louis Gray, and if I agree that the picture is of Louis Gray, then the accuracy rests with myself, not the face.com application. No facial recognition application is perfect, especially in challenging situations.
Oy. Perhaps my least favorite feature on Facebook is that the first photo album people see when they access your page is not one you yourself have chosen, but rather the one containing all the random photos people have tagged you in. I have at least one friend whose prime goal in life seems to be uploading unflattering and/or embarrassing and/or compromising photos of people and tagging them. I’ve untagged myself in most of them, but if she gets wind of this thing, untagging could become a part-time job.
I had no idea you could untag photos on Facebook. That’s definitely a relief. It worries me that people can actually upload AND tag images of me that I’ve not authorized.
Ground Breaking app, way to go Face.
Face.com rocks!
Great Product
Great Team
Great Entrepreneurial spirit
I know they will get very far with this and more
Z
Good idea !
It should already be integrated in facebook I think..
But as soon as you are a mac it seems less valuable :
- you could upload your albums directly to facebook from your computer with iPhoto
- the new iPhoto recognize the faces.. So I think that soon the iPhoto facebook app might do the same..
I like very much the writings and pictures and explanations in your adress so I look forward to see your next writings.
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Thank you!
If you can’t use the correct form of “its” then you shouldn’t have a job as a journalist.