6 ms·

I might be the only person in the universe who thinks Color is a fantastic idea, but not because it's trying to be an uber-cool new social network. Location-ba

I might be the only person in the universe who thinks Color is a fantastic idea, but not because it's trying to be an uber-cool new social network. Location-based photo sharing is an incredible idea. When I'm at an event -- say, a concert -- there are hundreds of people around me taking lots of different pictures. I want those pictures, but I don't know any of those people. Imagine going to a venue, not bringing a camera, but still coming away with awesome, memorable photos of the band, from people that have nice equipment and know how to take photographs. I'm not sure it justifies the huge valuation, but I can easily see why this product had the potential to be a huge player in the photo-sharing space. I feel like the press from their first round caused such an unnecessary uproar around their brand that coming back and producing a humble, useful app was nearly impossible. That said, I probably would have taken a $200 mil payoff for an idea for an iPhone app.

angryasian 15y ago
I agree to an extent, its not the idea of capturing a location as so much a collective at a specific moment in time. Example: Yelp/Gowalla collect pictures of food and venues and really it doesn't matter so much when they were taken. Color is cashing in on capturing moments in time that are relevant to a group of related or unrelated people, but the real question is how often is this relevant and even for times that are relevant, as a fleeting moment, will 90% of the pictures provided even matter to a user. I can tell you honestly I get bored after looking at the first few pictures of random people I care nothing about.
- arepb 15y ago
  The time axis on this is the most interesting part, but as you point out the reality is for most things people don't care. On the other hand, I can't wait until Google releases their timeline-based photos on top of Google streetview. It will be a browsable history of earth, geolocated.
funkah 15y ago
That's what I figured as well, but the execution was too confusing as it turns out.
DarkShikari 15y ago
Whether there's good money in solving this sort of problem is another question -- but sorting through shared photos at events is a surprisingly hard problem, as I learned recently. I attended Anime Expo 2011 in costume. Over the course of the two days I was there, I probably had at least 100 people stop me for photos -- not unexpected with thousands of people walking around carrying cameras. I attended a photo shoot and the whole deal: surely it'd be easy to find at least one of these pictures later, right? After the event, some friends were curious and wanted to see a photo of me. So I just search through the albums uploaded to Flickr and... ... well, it took days after the event for anyone I knew to find a single photo that even had me in the frame. The volume of uploaded photos was so high that you'd probably have to search for hours to find anything in particular. Nothing was tagged. Want to show your friend a really cool cosplay you saw? Unless you took a picture of it yourself, with your own camera, the odds of being able to find it are practically zero, even if hundreds of people took pictures of it. Now I understand the need of so many people to bring cameras with them: it's not necessarily that they need to have their own personal pictures of the things they liked. It's that if they don't take them, they'll never be able to find anyone else's pictures either. We're overwhelmed by such a sheer volume of photos and left unable to find what we want.
- derefr 15y ago
  Sounds like a good case for NFC. Put RFIDs in the attendee badges, and a sufficiently-advanced camera app could auto-tag those people as the picture is taken.
  - DarkShikari 15y ago
    Does that sort of technology work directionally? Typically the place was so crowded that you'd often have 40 other people within 15 feet when taking a photo, so it'd have to identify exactly the people in front of the camera, and not to your sides or behind you.
    - sparky 15y ago
      GP conflated RFID and NFC a bit, at least their colloquially accepted meanings. What we normally call 'NFC' has a range of <20cm, often <<20cm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication). This is what also makes NFC more suitable for mobile payments than RFID.
ErrantX 15y ago
I think a lot of the commentators are saying (and this my view too) that the concept is brilliant - but the execution was terrible and the valuation way too overblown. After all the fanfare... nothing seems to have come of them, at least not at the level they seemed to promise. This seems a pure tactical team move - I mean they can obviously do some decent coding :) and have a good product idea, plus they appear to be ace at marketing. That's the sort of company you want to be acquiring; especially if you can pivot the (not-very-good) product and steal the brand new market.
nivertech 15y ago
There is no bad PR!
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ZeroMinx 15y ago
I love going to gigs, but.. I prefer to remember my experience of what happened, which is not something that can be caught on camera. (note 1; I know I'm not the target audience for any social network) (note 2; I really dislike the fact that the audiences to gigs are just filled with people holding up their mobile. Instead of trying to get a pic to put on FB, why don't you try enjoy actually being there?!)
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  Second that. Be present. Live in the moment. A few choice photos are fine, but don't let the need to document and fb-brag consume your life. Just live it.
JED3 15y ago
There is a startup out of Raleigh, NC that's trying to solve this exact problem. deja Mi has built an iPhone app that allows you to capture media and upload it to a collection of media assigned to the specific venue or event you're attending. You can hear the spiel straight from the horse's mouth here: http://www.mycarolinatoday.com/2011/07/deja-mi/ http://www.mycarolinatoday.com/2011/07/deja-mi/ On a side note, for those local to the Triangle, NC there's going to be free concerts throughout the weekend in downtown Raleigh to kick off the release of their app. The lineup of musicians is very impressive, go check it out if you're able. More details: http://dejami.com/dejafest http://dejami.com/dejafest http://dejami.com/ http://dejami.com/ http://itunes.apple.com/app/deja-mi/id447681380?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/app/deja-mi/id447681380?mt=8
mark242 15y ago
"When I'm at an event -- say, a concert -- there are hundreds of people around me taking lots of different pictures." You're absolutely correct. They just aren't using Color, and that's the problem. Every single person I've talked to has said that Color is a great idea, _hypothetically_. In reality, Color fails on the most basic of user experience, it shows absolutely no content when it starts up, ever, and there's no sort of reward for even taking a photo with Color-- you don't get anything out of the experience. I get the idea that the product guys at Color sat down and thought, "okay, if everyone who has an iPhone or Android used our app instead of the default camera app, and everyone at a concert stood within 150 feet of each other (don't laugh, that's the range of Color), and all took photos within a short amount of time, they'd be in a great social network." I'll leave it to the reader to determine how absurd that sounds. The constraints on the application at startup basically doomed it. Take a look at Foursquare as a counterpoint. Early adopters didn't get to see anyone else checking in, they likely didn't have any friends also checking in, there weren't any photos, and there were very few non-NYC badges. But goddamn, you could be the mayor of _everywhere_. The functionality of Foursquare still works even when there's only _one_ person using it. The functionality of Color completely fails unless there are groups of people in very close proximity all using it at the same time.
- hammock 15y ago
  * They just aren't using Color, and that's the problem. * Then the problem is you, buddy. Self-organization and organic growth doesn't just "happen." It's the aggregation of many individuals TAKING individual ACTION. So it starts with you. The next time you go to a show, get your ten friends to download the app, and share the photos with each other. And make a couple new friends getting them to download it as well (you talk to people at shows right? If you aren't social why do you care about social apps?). Then if it's a good experience, when they go to shows some of them will tell their friends to do the same. That's how it starts. You don't just sit around on the HN comments waiting for it to blow up big.
  - Hisoka 15y ago
    Oh be quiet, secret Color employee. The problem is not with him. He's talking from a business standpoint about the friction for the average user. That's a REAL problem, and it's not his fault for lacking enthusiasm to use it. Besides he got nothing to lose.. it's not like it's a dealbreaker for his life.. Unfortunately, Color has a lot more at stake when they can't make users love their product. The good life down the drain...
orionlogic 15y ago
Agree with you and made my comment couple of days ago in here : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753996 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753996 Idea is good, they only need users.
deepGem 15y ago
But why would those people with nice equipment who take great photos want to give the photos to you, or anyone for that matter. They might be willing to share the photos but am not sure how that really helps. Will they allow you to share the photos to your circle.. so on and so forth. The valuation is another total mystery.
popschedule 15y ago
I'm solving this with my new iPhone app called Crowd (still in private beta), here's a sample of the web viewing portal http://thecrowdapp.com/5Qp6CHy http://thecrowdapp.com/5Qp6CHy if anyone wants to get a beta invite just email. jmm.seasons@gmail.com

angryasian 15y ago

I agree to an extent, its not the idea of capturing a location as so much a collective at a specific moment in time. Example: Yelp/Gowalla collect pictures of food and venues and really it doesn't matter so much when they were taken. Color is cashing in on capturing moments in time that are relevant to a group of related or unrelated people, but the real question is how often is this relevant and even for times that are relevant, as a fleeting moment, will 90% of the pictures provided even matter to a user. I can tell you honestly I get bored after looking at the first few pictures of random people I care nothing about.

arepb 15y ago
The time axis on this is the most interesting part, but as you point out the reality is for most things people don't care. On the other hand, I can't wait until Google releases their timeline-based photos on top of Google streetview. It will be a browsable history of earth, geolocated.

funkah 15y ago

That's what I figured as well, but the execution was too confusing as it turns out.

DarkShikari 15y ago

Whether there's good money in solving this sort of problem is another question -- but sorting through shared photos at events is a surprisingly hard problem, as I learned recently. I attended Anime Expo 2011 in costume. Over the course of the two days I was there, I probably had at least 100 people stop me for photos -- not unexpected with thousands of people walking around carrying cameras. I attended a photo shoot and the whole deal: surely it'd be easy to find at least one of these pictures later, right? After the event, some friends were curious and wanted to see a photo of me. So I just search through the albums uploaded to Flickr and... ... well, it took days after the event for anyone I knew to find a single photo that even had me in the frame. The volume of uploaded photos was so high that you'd probably have to search for hours to find anything in particular. Nothing was tagged. Want to show your friend a really cool cosplay you saw? Unless you took a picture of it yourself, with your own camera, the odds of being able to find it are practically zero, even if hundreds of people took pictures of it. Now I understand the need of so many people to bring cameras with them: it's not necessarily that they need to have their own personal pictures of the things they liked. It's that if they don't take them, they'll never be able to find anyone else's pictures either. We're overwhelmed by such a sheer volume of photos and left unable to find what we want.

derefr 15y ago
Sounds like a good case for NFC. Put RFIDs in the attendee badges, and a sufficiently-advanced camera app could auto-tag those people as the picture is taken.
- DarkShikari 15y ago
  Does that sort of technology work directionally? Typically the place was so crowded that you'd often have 40 other people within 15 feet when taking a photo, so it'd have to identify exactly the people in front of the camera, and not to your sides or behind you.
  - sparky 15y ago
    GP conflated RFID and NFC a bit, at least their colloquially accepted meanings. What we normally call 'NFC' has a range of <20cm, often <<20cm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication). This is what also makes NFC more suitable for mobile payments than RFID.

ErrantX 15y ago

I think a lot of the commentators are saying (and this my view too) that the concept is brilliant - but the execution was terrible and the valuation way too overblown. After all the fanfare... nothing seems to have come of them, at least not at the level they seemed to promise. This seems a pure tactical team move - I mean they can obviously do some decent coding :) and have a good product idea, plus they appear to be ace at marketing. That's the sort of company you want to be acquiring; especially if you can pivot the (not-very-good) product and steal the brand new market.

nivertech 15y ago

There is no bad PR!

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ZeroMinx 15y ago

I love going to gigs, but.. I prefer to remember my experience of what happened, which is not something that can be caught on camera. (note 1; I know I'm not the target audience for any social network) (note 2; I really dislike the fact that the audiences to gigs are just filled with people holding up their mobile. Instead of trying to get a pic to put on FB, why don't you try enjoy actually being there?!)

SkyMarshal 15y ago
Second that. Be present. Live in the moment. A few choice photos are fine, but don't let the need to document and fb-brag consume your life. Just live it.

JED3 15y ago

There is a startup out of Raleigh, NC that's trying to solve this exact problem. deja Mi has built an iPhone app that allows you to capture media and upload it to a collection of media assigned to the specific venue or event you're attending. You can hear the spiel straight from the horse's mouth here: http://www.mycarolinatoday.com/2011/07/deja-mi/ http://www.mycarolinatoday.com/2011/07/deja-mi/ On a side note, for those local to the Triangle, NC there's going to be free concerts throughout the weekend in downtown Raleigh to kick off the release of their app. The lineup of musicians is very impressive, go check it out if you're able. More details: http://dejami.com/dejafest http://dejami.com/dejafest http://dejami.com/ http://dejami.com/ http://itunes.apple.com/app/deja-mi/id447681380?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/app/deja-mi/id447681380?mt=8

mark242 15y ago

"When I'm at an event -- say, a concert -- there are hundreds of people around me taking lots of different pictures." You're absolutely correct. They just aren't using Color, and that's the problem. Every single person I've talked to has said that Color is a great idea, _hypothetically_. In reality, Color fails on the most basic of user experience, it shows absolutely no content when it starts up, ever, and there's no sort of reward for even taking a photo with Color-- you don't get anything out of the experience. I get the idea that the product guys at Color sat down and thought, "okay, if everyone who has an iPhone or Android used our app instead of the default camera app, and everyone at a concert stood within 150 feet of each other (don't laugh, that's the range of Color), and all took photos within a short amount of time, they'd be in a great social network." I'll leave it to the reader to determine how absurd that sounds. The constraints on the application at startup basically doomed it. Take a look at Foursquare as a counterpoint. Early adopters didn't get to see anyone else checking in, they likely didn't have any friends also checking in, there weren't any photos, and there were very few non-NYC badges. But goddamn, you could be the mayor of _everywhere_. The functionality of Foursquare still works even when there's only _one_ person using it. The functionality of Color completely fails unless there are groups of people in very close proximity all using it at the same time.

hammock 15y ago
* They just aren't using Color, and that's the problem. * Then the problem is you, buddy. Self-organization and organic growth doesn't just "happen." It's the aggregation of many individuals TAKING individual ACTION. So it starts with you. The next time you go to a show, get your ten friends to download the app, and share the photos with each other. And make a couple new friends getting them to download it as well (you talk to people at shows right? If you aren't social why do you care about social apps?). Then if it's a good experience, when they go to shows some of them will tell their friends to do the same. That's how it starts. You don't just sit around on the HN comments waiting for it to blow up big.
- Hisoka 15y ago
  Oh be quiet, secret Color employee. The problem is not with him. He's talking from a business standpoint about the friction for the average user. That's a REAL problem, and it's not his fault for lacking enthusiasm to use it. Besides he got nothing to lose.. it's not like it's a dealbreaker for his life.. Unfortunately, Color has a lot more at stake when they can't make users love their product. The good life down the drain...

orionlogic 15y ago

Agree with you and made my comment couple of days ago in here : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753996 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753996 Idea is good, they only need users.

deepGem 15y ago

But why would those people with nice equipment who take great photos want to give the photos to you, or anyone for that matter. They might be willing to share the photos but am not sure how that really helps. Will they allow you to share the photos to your circle.. so on and so forth. The valuation is another total mystery.

popschedule 15y ago

I'm solving this with my new iPhone app called Crowd (still in private beta), here's a sample of the web viewing portal http://thecrowdapp.com/5Qp6CHy http://thecrowdapp.com/5Qp6CHy if anyone wants to get a beta invite just email. jmm.seasons@gmail.com