The "extra" information we got came later after we already started working on it, and came as surprise. It just happened to bring the result back sooner than the other approach.
So it seems you weren't even confident when you got your confirmation, a.k.a., it was an informed guess but could have just as easily been a girl that looked alike at an event at the time she was supposedly at an event?
Tricky ol' Phil.
If you don't mind me asking, would other approaches discussed here have brought the result nonetheless? or did they?
If Justin observed correctly, you guys were very impressed with yourselves. Had you retrieved the answer by methods of which you were confident, you would've still been impressed, but not greatly.(I'm making a lapse conjecture here, of course)
Since you were confident that you would be able to find her, prior to looking at the picture, according to the article, I don't think you were looking for any information in the picture other than for confirmation.
However, some extra information in the picture(since it was taken very recently) enabled you to look further, which returned a result. Perhaps a building, an address, or some sort of landmark-ish location which narrowed whereabouts of the picture vastly? If this were the case, then I can understand that you guys were very impressed, because well, it is.
EDIT: Just saw the 'solution'; very nice touch!