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; designating collections of digital media assets associated with the first individual user account and other connected individual user accounts; training person identifiers for the previously identified persons by analyzing digital media assets containing the previously identified persons; using a processor to identify the detected unidentified person using the trained person identifiers; and associating metadata providing an indication of the one or more identified persons with the received digital media asset.