A new website has spread throughout social networks this afternoon, causing severe drops in work production, and both increases and decreases in self esteem, depending where on the path you’ve fallen. How-Old.net allows you to upload a picture (or take a picture while using the mobile app) and facial recognition does the rest in deciphering just how old you look. Now as they offer a disclaimer that the technology is still in development, many users have been told they look upwards to 50 years older than they really are, and some gender speculation may be off.

 

The site was actually created by two Microsoft developers, Corom Thompson and Santosh Balasubramanian, to test out their newly released face-detection API, and while they expected around 50 users to test it out, around 35,000 users had tried it out within a few hours. Assuming users would simply import random pictures from the Web, they were mistaken. “We assumed that folks would not want to upload their own pictures but would prefer to select from pre-canned images such as what they found online. But what we found out was that over half the pictures analyzed were of people who had uploaded their own images,” the engineers stated in a post on their blog. The beauty of the site comes in its flaws, being so terribly off by age and the humor people find behind it is what’s making everyone share it. Quite a way to get the research they’re looking for, and I’m pretty sure the developers aren’t complaining one bit.

 

 

Cory Townes was born and raised in Philadelphia, and currently lives in Brooklyn. A devout Philly sports fan, Townes is the Social Media Manager for EBONY.com. When he’s not saluting the plug or wondering how he looks 65 in this app, you can reach him on Twitter @CoryTownes.