Coke Zero Facial Profiler

One day, many years ago, my girlfriends ran up to me at university and excitedly informed that they’d found my “identical twin”! I’d always wanted a twin so naturally I was excited to meet her.  When I asked where they’d seen her, they laughed and corrected me: no, no, it’s a “him”!  Ok, I thought, interesting, I had to meet this male version of me.  Well, four years of uni passed by and I never did.

So you can imagine my excitement when I came across Coke Zero’s Facebook Profiler!

Playing on the fact that Coke Zero tastes just like regular Coke, but different, Crispin Porter + Bogusky – those clever cats – created this app to help you find people who look just like you, but a slightly different.

Here are some examples so far:

Coke Zero Facebook Profiler - Some Matches

Once you grant the app permission, via Facebook Connect, it scans through your photos with its facial recognition software and matches you to your nearest “digital double”.  If you don’t have enough recognizable pictures in your Facebook library, you can take one with a webcam or upload one from your desktop.   I’ve got over 530 tagged photos of me on my profile and the app couldn’t find a recognizable photo… hmm…

The Coke Zero Facebook Profiler launched in early October, with early users filling the database, and as of December 3^rd is live.  At the time of this post, it has 155,139 active monthly users and 6,521 fans. 

This is a simple and really fun idea - it's actually a bit addictive and definitely sticky!  As the database grows and the matches become more accurate I think the app will get loads more hits and become one of a growing number of Facebook Connect success stories (Prototype and BK's Whopper Sacrafice were two in '09).

I tried it a few times and am so far not too impressed with the actual functionality, ie, my matches.  Obviously this will depend on the size and content in the database, which is still growing.  That said, some of the pics in the queue before me were pretty good – but I don’t really think Adriene and I are digi doubles… or maybe I’ve got to go look in a mirror…?

Give it a go and let me know what you think!