The Coca Cola Company has launched a worldwide social media experiment this month developing a database of faces to allow fans to find their double. The Facebook application called the Facial Profiler is a fun tie in to Coke Zero’s original taste with none of the calories.

The application asks that participants grant the Coke Zero Facial Profiler access to your personal Facebook account so that it may search through your uploaded photos to scan them with its face recognition software. The application will ensure that you have the proper photo angles and enough of them before it requires you to upload more or take a few using your web cam.

Once the application has sufficient information it will add you to its database of fans and encourage you to invite friends to join in via Facebook as well. Once the database is full it will presumably start sending participants their digital doubles.

The one draw back of this application is that it is taking some time to fill the facial database with enough information to provide participants with a match. Visiting the Facebook page for the Facial Profiler application, many fans have been greatly disappointed with the speed at which the database is loading.

Others note that the application won’t work unless you recommend it to friends, which lets face it, many people shy away from as they don’t want to be the friend that fills your inbox with forwards or links to things you may not be interested in.

While I commend Coke Zero for finding an application that truly falls in line with its marketing message - they may have misjudged the medium. Most of us using social media today love the real-time, instant capability of its platforms. Patience, while perhaps a virtue is not necessarily a reality.