Polar Rose has recently invited a few people in to test out their facial recognition software. Upon creating your account, you are prompted to download the Firefox extension (sorry IE/Safari). Every time you see a facial photo online, a small rose will hover and allow you to type in a name for the face. These will then be stored on site and searchable.

This reminds me of Spock, the people search engine that collects people’s names and online presence (+ more). But what does this really offer? To what end do we catalog various names/faces?

With Riya, you can train the webware to recognize faces for you and offers photo hosting/blog posting. But all for naught since hey have moved to Like.com visual shopping. Disappointing.

Polar Rose has offered some new features before the Beta test like favorites and faces as your profile pic but that is it for now. How is this marketable? What is the ROI? What is next for face recognition software? Lastly, who will acquire Polar Rose?

photo captured by Polar Rose from Riya.com. Ironic, no?