I don’t know what the internet has come to when you have complete strangers compiling data on a photo of yourself within hours of posting it online. “FaceStat” is literally google type analytics for a more web 2.0 platform of the “hot or not” website. Have people become so vain that you can actually perform market research on yourself or your friends for the sole purpose of knowing what strangers think about you in one word?

Simply upload a picture to the site, and within a day over 40 people will judge it on at least 7 attributes that include: “what is my sexual orientation?”, “what do you think my name is?”, or “do you think i would win a fight with a medium sized dog?”  Answers are compiled into tag words that are ranked by popularity. The more people use the same word to describe photos, the larger the tag word becomes on the main site, compiling similarly described photos into specific groups. I can assume there already is an “ugly group”.

FaceStat says that it’s merely an experiment in crowd sourcing, but the possibilities of using this information for specialized demographic marketing is endless. Imagine a group of people have all been described as being “too pale”, this research would allow companies to already have a harnessed group of people that are all sitting around being pale on which they can push their latest “instant tan” product.

In a broader sense, the entire site may just be market research to show how people feel about certain faces. Faces that could ultimately be chosen to promote a brand. Social networking sites have a plethora of photos that show complete strangers who may just have joined or are online. How do people passing through the site feel about it? If companies knew more about what people found pleasing to the eye, then they’ve pretty much figured out a method to do consumer testing for what could end up being the new face of Revlon.

If that blonde with the cute smile is popular on the site with great tag words, then that maybe what people want to see when deciding to spend money. Sucks for the ugly people though.