Anaface

About

Anaface is a web-based photo analysis application that evaluates user-submitted profile images and provides a “facial beauty” score, which is determined by geometric calculations based on several points distributed across the face.

History

Anaface.com was launched in May 2009 by the St. Louis-based consulting service company Atama Group.^[5]

Features

Upon uploading a photo to the site, the web application generates a beauty score using 17 data points run through a series of geometric calculations. The score is based on bilateral symmetry and a variety of other facial-structural ratios, including the width of the nose and length of the ears in comparison to that of the entire face.

Online Presence

On July 29th, 2009, BodyBuilding Forums^[7] member colinmarcus submitted a thread to the “teen bodybuilding” subforum, challenging other members to beat his beauty score. Colinmarcus’ post continued to be bumped over the next three years, accumulating over 65 replies. The post continued to be bumped over the next three years, accumulating over 65 replies. On October 4th, 2010, Ebaumsworld Forums^[9] member Dodge submitted a thread recommending the site for those who want to know “if they are good looking or not.” On June 21st, 2011, Redditor monotonyrenegade submitted a post to the /r/conspiracy^[11] subreddit, which suggested that Anaface may be archiving individual’s unique facial patterns for an unknown institution. On October 21st, 2012, Newgrounds Forums^[8] member Skaren submitted a thread asking others to share their photo scores, which received more than 20 replies in the next four months.

Controversy

On July 1st, 2009 Forbes^[3] published an article about the newly launched site, noting the service’s conditions of use which practically grant the company a license to reappropriate the user-submitted content for commercial purposes.

a. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with FaceFigure (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).

Highlights

Many users have uploaded pictures of famous celebrities, fictional characters and Internet memes to be analyzed on the site, sometimes producing surprising results. On September 24th, 2010, YouTuber mattormeg submitted a slideshow of horror movie characters that had been run through the Anaface site (shown below).

On July 21st, 2011, Redditor lizgraace submitted a post^[10] in which several Redditors replied with screenshots of Internet memes uploaded to Anaface. Prior to being archived, the post received over 3,200 up votes and 500 comments. Additional examples can be found on Memebase^[2] and Tumblr^[6] under the tag “#anaface.”