Patent Document ID: 20110182482
Application ID: 12694305
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for automatically identifying persons in digital media assets associated with a database of individual user accounts, comprising: providing access to a database of individual user accounts, wherein the database includes connections between the individual user accounts; receiving a digital media asset associated with a first individual user account; analyzing the received digital media asset to detect an unidentified person contained in the received digital media asset; designating collections of digital media assets associated with the first individual user account and other individual user accounts that are connected to the first individual user account, wherein the other individual user accounts that are connected to the first individual user account include individual user accounts that are directly connected to the first individual user account and individual user accounts that are indirectly connected to the first individual user account, and wherein the collections of digital media assets include digital media assets containing previously identified persons; training person identifiers for the previously identified persons by analyzing the digital media assets containing the previously identified persons included in the designated collections of digital media assets; using a processor to perform a identification process to identify the detected unidentified person using the trained person identifiers, wherein the identification process gives a higher preference to previously identified persons who are owners of user accounts that are directly connected to the first individual user account than to previously identified persons who are owners of user accounts that are indirectly connected to the first individual user account; and associating metadata providing an indication of the one or more identified persons with the received digital media asset.