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April 22, 2008 4:14 PM PDT

FaceStat: What happens when Hot or Not hooks up with Google Analytics

Posted by Josh Lowensohn
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I'll admit it--one of my favorite sites years ago was Hot or Not.

Not because it combined the best facets of MySpace and StumbleUpon before either site existed, but because it was devilishly fun to put your own picture up there and get a general consensus of how other people thought you looked on a purely superficial level. Admittedly, there are serious flaws in such a system. Your picture could be not your own--and the camera can easily play tricks. What made the whole thing so damn fascinating were the stats. You got to see how you stacked up on a numerical scale, which at the time was revolutionary.

Following in Hot or Not's steps is FaceStat--a perversion of this idea, letting others rate you in a dozen categories, and best of all, making all the results public for everyone to see.

Some of the categories are downright sophomoric, like "does this person look intoxicated" or guessing their wealth and political party. These stats splash out across people's photos with little animations and can be browsed one at a time to see the specific percentages of how people ranked your shots.

One big difference from services like Hot or Not is that FaceStat uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to do the processing power, harnessing the power of the masses to do the legwork. Because of this, users are limited to just one upload a day, but will get results back in just a few hours. In our test we got our picture back in just 10 minutes.

To upload your own, just go here. You can add a shot from your hard drive, or Facebook. I have to give the site bonus points for not only letting you peruse your latest shots, but your entire folder of previous Facebook profile shots, which should make finding that shot of you that doesn't look anything like you far easier.

Let other people figure out your life story from a single snap shot using FaceStat, a Web 2.0 version of Hot or Not.

(Credit: CNET Networks)
Josh Lowensohn is an associate editor for Webware.com, CNET's blog about cool and otherwise useful Web applications and services. If you've found a site you'd like profiled, shoot him an e-mail. E-mail Josh.
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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 3 comments
by TroyJMorris April 22, 2008 4:55 PM PDT
I think you broke it :(
Reply to this comment
by TroyJMorris April 22, 2008 4:55 PM PDT
Okay, it's fixed now.
Reply to this comment
by Josh.Lowensohn April 22, 2008 5:06 PM PDT
Good to hear. How was it broken in the first place? :D
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