It's not nearly good enough for this. While I don't know what they're doing, it doesn't matter -- the state of the art in face recognition is far lower than what this requires.
I would also assume that Facebook's recognition performance is heavily dependent on the fact that everyone has a limited friend circle, because then the requirement is only that you can be distinguished among the few hundred or thousand people you've ever been photographed with, not the 100s of millions of users you haven't.
While not directly related (nor the method they are probably using), here's a project that describes how using others in your photographs can help recognition: http://lear.inrialpes.fr/pubs/2008/MV08/
So, what if once you upload the "missed connection" photo, Facebook tags it with GPS and filters possible matches against your current location? That would narrow it down quite a bit. I assume they have enough GPS data from other users' photos and status updates to at least place them generally within a state or city at a given time.
Comments
It's not nearly good enough for this. While I don't know what they're doing, it doesn't matter -- the state of the art in face recognition is far lower than what this requires.
I would also assume that Facebook's recognition performance is heavily dependent on the fact that everyone has a limited friend circle, because then the requirement is only that you can be distinguished among the few hundred or thousand people you've ever been photographed with, not the 100s of millions of users you haven't.
While not directly related (nor the method they are probably using), here's a project that describes how using others in your photographs can help recognition: http://lear.inrialpes.fr/pubs/2008/MV08/
So, what if once you upload the "missed connection" photo, Facebook tags it with GPS and filters possible matches against your current location? That would narrow it down quite a bit. I assume they have enough GPS data from other users' photos and status updates to at least place them generally within a state or city at a given time.