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Sequoia gives photo-sharing startup more money than they gave Google
- nostrademons 16y agoIt's mobile, it's social, and it's local! They managed to hit all the buzzwords in one startup!
- jarin 16y agoI'm a little concerned that it isn't viral and/or paradigm-shifting.
- nostrademons 16y agoIt probably is viral and paradigm-shifting too, based on the description. It really is the perfect startup - hits every buzzword, founder with a previous exit, all-star team, etc. Too bad startups aren't checklists to tick off.
- mhb 16y agoMaybe after they pivot.
- vibhavs 16y agoThey forgot group buying.
- gyardley 16y agoHeh. I believe the VC-approved word for this is 'solomo'.
- TryThinking 16y agoentrepreneurgasm!
- yaix 16y agoAfter trying hard to understand their idea, I think you just delivered the best explanation. They even mentioned the possibility to integrate "coupons" in their system!
- kalvin 16y agoTitle doesn't do it justice. The photo-sharing part isn't what's novel. They seem to be building a social graph automatically weighted on physical proximity+frequency, using smartphone sensors (the most important one of which happens to be a camera). That's cool, and potentially game-changing. "All of your contacts are presented in a list of thumbnails ordered by how strong your connection is to that user. Whenever Color detects that you’re physically near another user (in other words, that you’re hanging out), your bond on the app gets a little stronger. So when you fire up the app and jump to your list of contacts, you’ll probably see your close friends and family members listed first. But if you don’t see a friend for a long time, they’ll gradually flow down the list, and eventually their photos will fade from color to black-and-white. ...If you fired up Color in that restaurant example from earlier, you’d only be able to see photos that had been taken by friends and strangers within 100 feet of that restaurant. That is, unless you jump to your social connections. Tap on your best friend’s profile photo, and you’ll then be able to see all of the photos that have recently been taken within 100 feet of them. In other words, Color is trying to give you a way to see everything that’s going on around you, and everything that’s going on around the people you care about." "Color is also making use of every phone sensor it can access. The application was demoed to me in the basement of Color’s office — where there was no cell signal or GPS reception. But the app still managed to work normally, automatically placing the people who were sitting around me in the same group. It does this using a variety of tricks: it uses the camera to check for lighting conditions, and even uses the phone’s microphone to ‘listen’ to the ambient surroundings. If two phones are capturing similar audio, then they’re probably close to each other."
- jkincaid 16y agoYeah, based on what they said they have some much more ambitious plans than just photo swapping. Unfortunately (but unsurprisingly) they were vague about what those plans entail — they made some references to heavy data crunching, but I couldn't really get a straight answer as to exactly what they were crunching or what it would be used for.
- Alex3917 16y agoKnowing Sequoia, I'm guessing it will automatically trade exotic derivatives by using ambient lighting data to make better weather predictions.
- dstein 16y ago"But how exactly is Color going to make “wheelbarrows of cash”... the company is still very early on, but it eventually plans to offer businesses a self-serve platform for running deals and ads $41 Million for a photo sharing app and this is the best they came up with? You gotta be kidding me.
- Joakal 16y agoI'm guessing when the user takes a picture of yourself near a logo/brand, it automatically offer deals/ads based on the fancy proximity guessing thing. The company seems to be trying to build up eyeballs at this stage. The high price tag mean they have several patents + trusting investors + solid plan, etc. It's similar to Facebook (Zuckerberg has patents of his own I believe).
- phlux 16y agoHere is some tinfoil for you... Assuming they have a back-door API - this could be a freaking BOON for intelligence gathering arms that are seeking to know the surrounds of anti establishment types. Further - wait until you apply spatial modeling capabilities (what was that MS tech demo called?) where you can start building 3d navigable models of spaces that all the data collected in that 100' radius allows. Dont think the military is doing CRAZY things with optical intel: "The system can also be used for general night vision; it can follow bats five miles away in darkness." http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/02/72632 http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/02/72632 the military now has autonomous robotic helicopters that can visually track bullets in flight. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/gigapixel-flyin/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/gigapixel-flyin/ Now they just need the general public to be a part of the larger sensor intel fabric.
- jarin 16y agohttp://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...
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- danest 16y agohttp://www.color.com/ http://www.color.com/ I am not sure why the article did not have the link for the application. edit - never mind they updated the article.
- dot 16y agothat much money sounds ridiculous, but there's definitely something very cool about proximity-based social networks and these guys now have the time and cash to find the right application.
- olivercameron 16y agoSounds technologically impressive, I'm just wondering if a dynamic friend list is really an advantage over a static list. The last thing I want to be doing when hanging out with friends is to be on my mobile phone checking out what they've posted to Color. I'd rather, you know, interact with them in real life. Maybe I missed a vital point of it, though.
- olivercameron 16y agoI wonder how much color.com cost?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- aepstein 16y ago"Bill recently acquired the domain color.com for $350K" according to Steve Thommes in the TC comments.
- parth16 16y agoholy cow
- geoffw8 16y agoi might see if I can get colorapp.com for £3.50
- robryan 16y agoWonder how much colour.com cost.
- nikcub 16y agofirst thing that I thought to myself when I saw the name - half the world spells it different, so they may want to also buy and brand the colour.com domain
- guelo 16y agoWas anybody able to find the android app? They don't link directly to it and searching for "color" is too generic. Which, btw, is a problem with their name.
- danest 16y agoIt is coming out later tonight. I tried looking for it as well.
- helton 16y agoEven on the iPhone, you can't find the app searching for "color". I followed the link from color.com
- tuhin 16y agoProblem with such a cool yet common domain is that you do not get shown at the top unless you already are big. Also how does it feel: " I am using color" vs "I am using Colors"?
- arfrank 16y agoA couple of things stick out from this numbers wise: * 7 founders (~14% split evenly, unlikely though) * 41M raised * Staff of 27 (obviously get some equity) Some valuation math: (Dilution) Pre-Money Post-Money (Founder dilution from ~14.28%) 15% 232.3M 273.3M 12.1% 20% 164M 205M 11.4% 25% 123M 164M 10.7% 30% 95.6M 136.6M 9.99% 40% 61.5M 102.5M 8.57% 50% 41M 82M 7.14% I realize the percentages are essentially a wild guess, but I feel its a good data point to add in.
- nostromo 16y agoI'm curious how a proximity-based social network is going to keep from placing me closer to my upstairs neighbor than, say, my brother on the other coast.
- stoney 16y agoI agree, it's an interesting problem. Thinking about it maybe there's a kind of bathtub curve of photos that I'm interested in - I'm highly interested in photos around me and of close friends - I don't really care about photos of acquaintances and people I went to school with but haven't seen in years, etc, -I'm highly interested in photos of people I am close to but that live far away.
- geoffw8 16y agoI'm curious as to why Facebook won't just add a "photos your friends have taken around this place" feature and make these guys a distant memory
- David 16y agoI think from Color's perspective, that's the idea -- only figuring that "adding" implies an acquisition. Actually, I guess it would depend on whether market validation is worth $10m -- which I doubt, because it's just a feature to them, not a whole product. Also, that's what interns are for, right?
- jkincaid 16y agoI'm pretty sure that Color also takes interaction within the application into account (i.e. if you frequently comment on a user's photos, view their stream, etc., then it also boosts your social connection).
- hammock 16y agoYeah, or the idiot in the cube next to me that I spend 10 hours a day with.
- avichal 16y agoAny "there isn't a bubble" believers want to comment on this one...?
- greendestiny 16y agoI've previously been in the camp that there isn't a bubble. This seems like its a valuation of 1 or 2 hundred million for a company that hasn't launched yet. It's very hard to see how this deal could make sense in a traditional way. Don't get me wrong I think this sounds like an excellent idea that could turn out to be an excellent company. It's just such a large amount of money to raise that it kind of raises the question of what game the VCs and/or founders are really playing. It seems like at this point there might be a possibility of VCs planning on Facebook and Twitter going public and either being acquired at an inflated price with all that new capitalization or going public themselves in the wake.
- mitjak 16y agoThe thing that always gets me is that my local movie theatre is playing terrible unoriginal flicks shot for a budget higher than that.
- greendestiny 16y agoI think movie flops are much more uncommon than failed companies though. Maybe this investment represents a very uncommon level of certainty in the company's success. It could also just be a bad investment, there is always a range. It still isn't clear to me that if there was a sudden readjustment of these overvalued companies how many companies would really be effected and what it would mean for the sector as a whole. I don't think its defining the whole sector the way it did in 2000. It might mean bad things for VCs in general, but maybe this is the economy working VCs out of the system.
- jonknee 16y agoAt least they have a solid business plan (sell tickets, DVD/BluRay and PPV, TV rights, etc). Color doesn't even accept revenue.
- kmfrk 16y agoI can see how people would find this valuable, but what does the company need all that money for? Do they just have a mean, scalable roadmap that we are unaware of?
- rythie 16y agoIt's pretty difficult to search for this on the iPhone App. Store, I went through pages and pages on a search for 'color' before going to color.com and clicking the link. Will most people do this though?
- jimboyoungblood 16y agoIs it April 1 already?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- wikyd 16y agoIs anybody else actually able to use the app? I got past the "take a picture of yourself", but now I just see blank white screens everywhere.
- pramanat 16y agoJust tried it. Works. Don't know if the photos I'm seeing are from the neighbors in my office building, though.
- flyosity 16y agoSame happened here. It's totally blank until more people around you actually have & use the app. Which no one will do because... it's blank unless other people use it. Classic chicken or the egg problem. I guess $41 million doesn't buy you an answer.
- melvinmt 16y agoI don't care what it does, $41 million at pre-launch for a mobile app is ridiculous. I sure believe they've hired a staff of 29 very talented people. But even if you give each of them a salary of more than 1 million dollars it would still take a year to burn that money.
- newhouseb 16y agoThe article makes it seem as if Color hasn't launched yet but it actually has (presumably today). I downloaded it and am pretty stunned at how confusing of a UI $41 million can buy you.
- kmfrk 16y agoParts of it are downright broken: the swipe-to-delete makes the "delete" button appear in a very awkward position. I'll level with a lot of their choices for being "different", but they've gone too far in some instances. It feels very un-iOS. Maybe because it's cross-platform?
- hammock 16y agoCreepiest part- "it uses the camera to check for lighting conditions, and even uses the phone’s microphone to ‘listen’ to the ambient surroundings." The auto-social network based on proximity is awesome, though. I can't wait for this and the creep factor will be gone in five years anyway since we are all moving to a more open society.
- melvinmt 16y agoCreepy indeed. I wonder if it has a backdoor to ECHELON.
- kmfrk 16y agoEchelon is Facebook, Twitter, and Color. :)
- brown9-2 16y agoWhat in the world does a picture app need to use my mic for?
- pedalpete 16y agoNot sure why you would have been down-voted for that question. In theory, If you've got multiple people taking photos at the same place with a short period of time, you can get sound media as well. Though some may suspect they are trying to put together conversations, I doubt that is the case (but maybe if you want to go for a conspiracy theory). -------------update apparently they are capturing your conversations -------------------- from their homepage "capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album".
- jacoblyles 16y agoThere have been some research projects which can use snapshots of the lighting and sound around you to tell which building you are located in with 90% accuracy. I.E. they can tell you are in the Starbucks and not the hardware store next door. See "SurroundSense: Mobile Phone Localization via Ambience Fingerprinting" in the proceedings of Mobicom 2009.
- pkteison 16y agoSo the idea here is that it will let me see more and be more in touch with... the people who I already see and am in touch with? I'd rather do the exact opposite - it's my friends in other states who I want digital tools to keep me more in touch with.
- geoffw8 16y agoI'm gonna just go ahead and say this, does anyone else think this is a bit silly? $41m. There's no getting away from the fact this is just an app that shows you photos taken near you, by strangers. I just don't get it. I might be wrong, in 12 months I might be kicking myself, I just cant imagine it.
- ChuckMcM 16y agoAbsolutely, but that is what makes the speculating fun. You have to ask, what possible story could you spin around what they have that justifies $41M pre-revenue. Even assuming a healthy multiple of 20, and investor exit of $250M you're talking about projected earning of $12.5M with a gross margin of say 60% that's like $21M/yr in revenue. And I'm assuming an ABC round (which is to say the would expect to not do another round prior to some liquidity 'event'). But they clearly have a good story and their investors are happy. So silly or not, its the path they've chosen. It reminded me of this blog posting I ran across: http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/02/50-questions-why-too-much-money-will-kill-your-company/ http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/02/50-questions-why-too-much-...
- geoffw8 16y ago"Simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album. There’s no attaching, uploading, or friending to do. " It seems like all Facebook need to do is add a "Merge Albums" feature for use between friends. And I've come to the conclusion they're just after FB stock via acquisition. Fair plan.
- sfrench 16y agoI just fired it up on a couple devices, and it's not very intuitive. It's a great idea, they just need some UX help now.
- jtesp 16y agoProximity based advertising is cheaper and more efficient to smaller and local businesses. I've been working on something similar... $41M sure would be nice! For a group of proven talent I can understand the investment, but $41M is pretty crazy.
- rooshdi 16y agoWell, at least they have enough money to market it down people's throats. They're going to need every single dollar they can get to eventually get some of those Facebook users to want to use this thing.
- VladRussian 16y ago>Nguyen has visions of fundamentally changing some aspects of social interaction and local discovery with the app, which he considers part of the so-called Post-PC movement. webvan anybody?
- dannyr 16y agoThe link to the Android Market does not go to the app page. With a name like 'Color', it's almost impossible finding it in the market.
- GVRV 16y agoExactly, been searching for a while now. Can anyone who finds it, post a link to a QRcode?
- Cherian_Abraham 16y agoTry "Paradigm shifting" as a search keyword.
- jerome_bent 16y ago(This is offtopic, and probably best put in a AskHN thread, but) Why no love for BlackBerry?
- dools 16y agoHey Color dudes, if you're here - presumably those photos are being stored on a server, can I browse a timeline of photos taken in my area? Like if I'm in some place on a Saturday and want to see what it was like last Saturday, or what it's like on a Friday night? Think of a bar conversation, or a restaurant or something "It's quiet now but check it out on a Friday night! It goes mental!".
- pramanat 16y agoVery cool and a bit creepy at the same time. I'm thinking about Hitchcock's Rear Window. I'm able to see what my office building neighbors are doing (I think...).
- sriramk 16y agoJust played with it. I was intrigued by the sign-up process - it only asked for my first name and photo. Is it doing something magical to tie my'account' to my name and photo? Or is the user name a much 'looser' association and not something you have a strong hold over?
- joshhart 16y ago41 million??? No part of me believed there was another bubble. About-face! I'm considering building a clone on android and GPLing it. Who's in?
- joshhart 16y ago41 million??? No part of me believed there was another bubble. About-face! I'm considering building a clone on android and GPLing it. Who's in? I don't think the tech here is that hard.
- flyosity 16y agoI just tried out the iPhone app and I'm pretty disappointed. Color seems like one of those ideas that would be pretty rad if 1 million people already used it. Because no one has the app yet, if you fire it up it's totally blank. You take a picture of yourself, post it, then the rest of the UI is whitespace. There's nothing to look at or do. It's possibly the worst first-run user experience I've ever seen. I wonder if the Color engineers were always using the app together and always seeing each other's photos. If that's the case the UI was always full of stuff to look at, and they probably demoed it to journalists like this as well. Did they ever actually see the app as an empty slate like everyone will see it the first time they use it? My guess is: no.
- olivercameron 16y agoRight on, a ton of these new social apps have this same problem. I remember Path 1.0 was a similar experience.
- desigooner 16y agoI feel the same. Unfortunately, after spending a few minutes with such an app and not having a positive impression, it's pretty rare that I would revisit the app again later in the future. Most of the people I know behave the same way: if it catches their attention, it stays on the phone or else the app's gone. The best launch scenario for them would have been SXSW .. instead, all the group messaging apps got the limelight and these guys seem to have missed that boat .. Also, what's the privacy aspect of this app?! I could think of a few concerns.. e.g. someone's photos popping up when the user doesn't intend to be seen at a particular place ..
- jonmc12 16y ago$1m for product, $3m for marketing, $37m for curation of a constant stream of chatroullette-esque pornographic images?
- danssig 16y agoThis is a good point. If I'm sitting in a very densely populated area the odds that some couple within 100' are exhibitionists must be pretty high.
- alain94040 16y agoYes, it's mind boggling, but Sequoia has a problem: they have way too much money under management. So when they find one idea they like, they invest like crazy to push it to the extreme. Add senior VPs to the executive staff because it will help go from a $100M company to a $1B company. That costs a lot of money. Likelihood of success? Low, but that's ok as long as it works once every 10 years.
- thatusertwo 16y agoAll embrace big brother!
- thatusertwo 16y agosharing pictures all around you, tagging your location, listening to the ambient sounds around it, centralized server.... anyone else see this as a serious privacy fail.... I'm still going try it out, but just saying.
- Aloisius 16y agoI can totally see people using this like Craiglist's missed connections...
- nir 16y agoIf you're trying to evaluate based on how useful it is, how cool, potential income etc you're missing the point. The goal is to flip this to the next sucker. A cool domain name, a celeb team, an app that's bound to attract media hype (look for "The Color.com Revolution" coming from Tehran University in 2012) - a year or two from now, provided the bubble doesn't burst, Sequoia can unload this on Google or Facebook and make a tidy profit.
- jfager 16y agoThe underlying technology sounds like it was inspired by The Dark Knight - sensors in cell phones streaming data back to a central server where it can all be processed together into a cohesive view of what's going on in the world. The photo-sharing aspect just sounds like a hook to get consumers to actually put it on their phones. I'd imagine that the bigger play is trying understanding where people go, who they go there with, when they go, all of that. Facebook has the data to reconstruct that information after the fact, when people come home and upload their pictures, but this looks like an attempt to see it unfold in real time. Advertisers are already getting used to having this kind of information on the web, with tracking cookies, twitter, and real-time ad auctions giving them immediate, constant feedback from and control over people's online experience. The company that figures out how to get a similar datastream out of and targeted advertisements into meatspace is going to make mad money; if these guys have a legitimate shot at doing it, $41M probably isn't so crazy. On the other hand, just downloaded the app, and the first cut is kind of crap.
- olivercameron 16y agoIsn't 7 founders a little excessive?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- crux 16y ago'Say you walk into a restaurant with twenty people in it. You sit down at a table with four friends, and start chatting. Then one of your friends pulls out their phone, fires up Color, and takes a snapshot of you and your buddies. That photo is now public to anyone within around 100 feet of the place it was taken. So if anyone else in the restaurant fires up Color, they’ll see the photograph listed in a stream alongside other photos that have recently been taken in the vicinity.' Correct me if I'm wrong, but when it comes to photo sharing, aren't the people in your immediate vicinity at the time you take a photo the people who are going to be the least interested in getting that photo shared to them?
- sks 16y agoI think you have a great point here. Other than documenting an event I cannot see any utility in sharing photographs with people in my immediate vicinity.
- Aloisius 16y agoWell that really depends on how cute the people around you are and how much you'd like to contact them without you know, actually getting up and talking to them.
- Khaki 16y agoI can see the viral ad now: Boy sees a cute girl but can't work up the guts to talk to her. Boy notices she's taking pictures with Color and writes: 'will you go out with me' on a paper napkin. Boy takes picture of the napkin with Color. Girl sees the message but ignores him. Boy secretly keeps the photos she shared longing for his lost love till he's an old man. Camera pulls back to show his grandkids using Color. Fin.
- rokhayakebe 16y agoNot really. Let's say you walk in a club at 1AM, you get to see what the party was like before you. Also clubs are usually concentrated in the same area, so you may also see what happening in the other establishments.
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- johnrob 16y agoWhat has YC (and every other prominent investor) been emphasizing lately? That the team is the most important part of the deal. And that team looks rock solid, arguably more so (on paper) than google did in 1999.
- Cherian_Abraham 16y agoTrue. But does that alone deserve a 100 million dollar evaluation? I dont know enough tech luminaries who can constitute a team that can command such a high price tag, on launch day none the less. What do I know? My own wife wouldnt put down $100 on me to win :)
- tuhin 16y agoMy own wife is a funny term. Redundancy at it's maximum.
- tuhin 16y agoWhy the downvote? It is redundant and I just dropped a note of English usage. If one has to emphasis, it would be "Even my wife...". Just like saying Round circle or Straight line! Or is the point of commenting only when you add hacking info?
- gjm11 16y agoThere's nothing wrong with "my own wife". (A Google Books search quickly turns up "my own wife", "my own child", "my own father", and "my own mother" in Dickens, for instance.)
- Cherian_Abraham 16y agoDisclaimer: Three of us are building a pet project that has some similarities with Color. One big difference - all user generated content is private by default. That out of the way, we are certainly envious about the 100-200 million dollar evaluation they got on day one. With about 4k spent so far, in our case and with three of us chipping in any extra time we have (me - any extra time I have outside of lurking here), we are still a couple of months away from a MVP that will make us cringe ever so slightly when we see how far we will have to go. Till then, no real sleep, and a lot of heartburn. Still, its good to see Color validating some of what we do, but in the end, we both will have to prove there is a market. We however can afford to fail early and not give any VC's any heartburn, just our own families. One thing is for sure, we do not plan to build sonar capabilities. We dont have the knowhow and I am not sure that will be the make or break for us anyway. We also dont have the same pedigree, and therefore its clear that VC's will not be snapping at our heels (But we go back six years, all three of us). We are ok with that, but heck..41 million is a lot of money. As the weeks peel away, I hope to share here on HN where we stand with the product and hopefully even line up some kind souls here who will be willing to beta test for us in return for some good karma. We cant afford to pay (please refer back to the 4k burn total). We however have some ideas on how we plan on monetizing. We plan on finding out as early as we can, whether our ideas coincide with real needs from local businesses. Right now, I am shamelessly stopping people on the street, as they veer away, ignore, stare, and sometimes stop and tell me what they need and what they want. I do this as behind the scenes we toil away on building something that in the end we can be proud of. In all fairness, right now, they have a far more capable app, employing 9 times our current strength and vastly more capital and brain power. In the end, may the best viable product and company win.
- bbd37 16y agoWould love to chat, sounds like what we are doing with Pixamid.
- tmugavero 16y agoI just tried using this app and it crashes every time I try to take a pic on a fully updated iPhone 4, after a fresh restart. I'm not sure what they're doing with that $41 million (besides buying trademarks and unoriginal domain names), but there are some really talented people doing much more with much less. I'm sure they'll fix it, but seriously guys... The idea is interesting, but not defensible enough for them to stop a couple of hackers with $15k from besting it.
- ashbrahma 16y agoLooks like they spent most of the money on the domain name. Color.com is now live..
- nikcub 16y agothe Tyler Durden in me wonders how they are going to stop people broadcasting cock shots to every person within 150 feet
- pedalpete 16y agoPoor title on the part of TC, but I think it is important to remember that when Sequoia invested in Google, everybody thought search was dead, tech had just taken a bath, and the founders were an unknown. This group is at the very popular intersection of photo-sharing, social network, real-time, local/location and I'm sure more. They have a rock-star proven team, and tech is a popular investment now.
- SideSwipe 16y agoSo, I wonder how long until someone is going to use this to create a real-time location based hot or not?:P
- tuhin 16y agoOk, correct me if I am totally mark on this one but here are my takeaways: 1) The idea of creating groups on the fly to take photographs from a shared location is what got the funding. But using a tighter geofencing (remember how in Gowalla one had to stand at a point to check in) the same can be brought in Instagram which already has a million or so members. 2)The photo is public for anyone in the vicinity of 100 feet or perhaps everybody (sorry for missing that) but one does realise that it limits my ability to share things with the world. I mean only in case when something is cool would I want to share it with the world and other times stop short of making myself look not so cool. 3) Local+Social+Mobile is great on paper but these are not the dimensions that make a great app. It is the underlying mechanics. For a $41 million investment and a overpriced domain name, they sure did not blow my mind off. 4) As far as the white noise of social apps is concerned it was the same problem with all apps, facebook included if you were in the party early! Can't hang them for that. 5)For the latent interest in finding photos around an area or location, there always are foursquare/gowalla (sitting on huge data) and instagram with the tags lately (remember #sxsw ?). You really think one would use them? 5) I remember Chris Dizon lately writing about investing in people over ideas and it looks like with 7 rockstar cofounders, thatis what happened here. But hey, who said anything about turning a blind eye to the idea? 6) Last, people around me wanting to see photos around them :) can just turn around or shoot foursquare to find a lot more info over a longer period of time than using the app, right? Of course I am saying this all since I am a hater for seeing them receive such a huge funding for no apparent (to me) reason!
- g123g 16y agoWhat about the spammers or weirdos sending their images to an unsuspecting crowd. I will be wary of seeing photos shared by unknown people in a public and crowded place like Times Square. And what about children using this app? Can they watch all uncensored, unfiltered images any stranger wants to share?
- sown 16y ago> That photo is now public to anyone within around 100 feet of the place it was taken. So if anyone else in the restaurant fires up Color, they’ll see the photograph listed in a stream alongside other photos that have recently been taken in the vicinity. How does that algorithm work? Is that like a point-in-a-polygon problem? It could be lots of updates as to who is near what, etc. I just don't know.
- nickgeiger 16y agoSounds interesting, but shouldn't they have a huge user base before this kind of money comes in? There are a lot of interesting things going on in this space (and with this app), but minus user base and revenue, I just can't help but wonder if this kind of funding is an example of the bubble that we may well be in. Kudos to them if I'm wrong and they're actually able to mint cash from this app.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- yaix 16y ago"... and even uses the phone’s microphone to ‘listen’ to the ambient surroundings ..." Yeah, I definitely want an app that is listening to what I say all of the time. Great idea. The automatic Social Graph based on proximity is a good idea. But doesn't it make you best friends with all of your neightbors (at home and work) and other random people you just happen to walk by or meet every day? And why would I want to see pics of a restaurant that some friend sits in?
- joshu 16y agohttp://color.com/s/njo9KY http://color.com/s/njo9KY
- epynonymous 16y agomeagan's a hotty.
- epynonymous 16y agowhy the downvote? this is not just some random comment that has nothing to do with the article; i was merely making a social comment via performance art about how easy it is to stalk with this tool. meagan's picture can be found at the 8AM mark, she's an attractive woman and what caught my initial reaction. as an aside, there should be full disclosure and responsibility for all hackernews users, who down voted me?
- atirip 16y agoSo you take pictures of others at their free time and publish them without consent to the world and call it social? I call it paparazzi. Isn't paparazzi one of the most admired and respected profession? :-)
- aracena 16y ago"And what I'm interested in is investing in people." -Arthur Rock
- elvirs 16y agoLet's say I'm having great time with my girlfriend, other friends and their girlfriends, etc. in a restaurant. Why would I wan to share our photos with the creepy guys next table?
- zyfo 16y agoWith all this excessive photo-sharing going on, I think we'll soon find ourselves wanting to counter the adage "A picture is worth a thousand words" with its opposite.
- noamt 16y agoThis is a great idea I think. It has the potential to fundamentaly change the way people use photos, and because of the all media exposure they will get (41M..) it might actually work. The only thing that's sad is that about 6 month ago I met a guy who had been trying to raise money for his idea, which was very very similar, and all the big funds turned him down. So there's again the repeting lesson of the value of who you are when you raise an idea and money. Hope it'll work anyway - sometimes it's nice to know that your idea was really good even if you're not the one who made it in the end.
- bbd37 16y agoSince our tiny 4 person startup built a photo sharing app with very similar core ideas, I was scared shitless this morning on first reading about Color. That passed. Wrote it all up on the blog, but here is what I think they have wrong and our Pixamid has right: Privacy: I think most people want to more privacy on their photos, not less. If the camera can sense who you are with (like Pixamid and Color try), by default, share ONLY with those people. By default, Pixamid shares with only your friends at he same place as you - you can choose to share with everyone there too. Network Effects: Color™ might be cool in a world where everyone uses Color™. But we don’t see such a world anytime soon. People will use lots of different apps: Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Picasa -hell, even Ofoto (thanks Mom). We want to pull in your friends’ photos from any of these services, automatically as much as possible. See our post below about the Instagram magic we do; we’re dong a lot more of this cool stuff now. Addressing a real problem: We are all taking more photos with our great phone cameras. But we hate to organize our photos. And if we add in Friend photos, it is even worse. Users of Pixamid get automagical photo organization as a byproduct of using the app. Each set of photos, with place, event, and who you were with. The things we will do with this in the future - can’t wait to show everyone! But we believe that our solution will revolutionize how people share photos online. http://blog.pixamid.com/post/4060807527/the-color-tm-challenge http://blog.pixamid.com/post/4060807527/the-color-tm-challen...
- cherring 16y agoCurrently it has 88 1 star ratings out 107 ratings, then 27 5 star ratings, so I don't really get it. I guess 27 people are right near each other and seeing lots of photos? I love to see people striking out and building stuff and really going for it, it's something I really want to do. I guess I just don't see the part where this is worth $41M? Not trying to hate though, I think people going out and building stuff is awesome.
- Brizz 16y agoThis is an app built by engineers in the valley for engineers in the valley. This "bubble" project is truly a bubble. You need to step outside your own experience and understand if your products are viable to others who aren't you. Walk around anywhere that's not SF or NY and this app will be useless for at least the first year. And who can can make sense of this UI other than an engineer? Engineering breakthrough? Yes. Useful mobile tool? No.
- harscoat 16y ago$41M to spend in what?
- crux 16y agoI'm using this right now and I still really don't get it. As far as I can tell, this does the exact opposite of a social app: instead of bringing together people with similar interests or relationships (like Instagram, for all its faults), it exposes me to people who I have nothing in common with except happening to be in the same neighborhood. I mean, am I right? Can that possibly be the point? There is a 'group' composed of myself and three other people I've never met, all of whom presumably live or work nearby—and then another 'group' that's not apparently any different, except I haven't joined it yet. I'll admit that some of my confusion is due to the completely opaque interface. EDIT: Ok, RTFA seems to indicate that these groups are fluid and intended to form themselves according to whom you hang out with most often, so presumably if I keep taking pictures then it will figure out who my friends are. That's a neat idea, but unfortunately still moves against my instagram-a-like point above: if we should have learned one thing about how people make friends in the year 2011, it's that physical proximity doesn't really enter in to it.
- ssharp 16y agoFinance fail? If you discount the investment to 1999 value, it's under what Sequoia gave Google.