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Color

color.com

88 pointsatularora74 comments

We must at least be in a photo sharing bubble.

No kidding. It's an extension of sharing clips of text, except now it's more awkward.

Wow - the first thing it does is to ask you to give your name and take a photo of yourself, then it shares it with random strangers without warning or asking your permission or giving a way to delete it.

Pretty unpleasant initial experience!

That bugged me too. Turns out you can swipe to delete the photo in one of the views. The photo still shows up in some other views so I'm not entirely sure it did anything.

probably more unpleasant for the people w/in 100 feet of me as I accidentally snapped a quick photo of my coin purse... (hopefully it doesn't get mistaken for an ariel photo of Iraq again)

Sounds like a perfect match for Facebook then.

Agree. I found the UI to be generally unintuitive: lots of new icons that didn't immediately mean anything to me, the groups seem to create and disappear and not mean anything. I spent 5-10 minutes with it and didn't get it - not good for an iOS app.

Did anyone see dhh's tweet about this? https://twitter.com/dhh/status/50764612001476608

I think he may be on to something here...

That is a clever way to get liquidity out of Facebook w/o having to pull any money out of Facebook itself (hence never showing any sort of pessimism).

Instead of facebook, I'll bet they will repeat the same strategy like when Google acquired Youtube

i'll comment on this so that in 9 months it will be in my comments section and ill be able to confirm or deny this speculation.

But Sequoia did not invest in Facebook http://www.crunchbase.com/company/facebook

According to one of the comments at TC, the domain cost $350K. It's cool to see newer (and well-funded) startups going for non-"web 2.0" names, e.g. Path, and now Color.

I wonder how important is a domain name for a mobile type app?

Given the $350,000 price tag, I sure hope it's somewhat important.

I couldn't forget their product name and domain if I tried.

It's important, but only because the idea that you can have an exclusively mobile content sharing product is not realistic (right now). There's an expectation among users that they should be able to access the service from whichever screen they are using at that moment.

Ironically in Color's case, they don't even ask you to login, so there's really no way to do that. Therefore, the $350K has gone towards a really expensive splash page.

> I wonder how important is a domain name for a mobile type app?

Very important, given the crowded state of the App Store and the unorganized state of the Android Market.

This app will be spread among friends. If you want to install it, goto Color.com. Easy.

I am not so sure.

It seems that we share by sending links not by saying the name out loud.

I'm from one of those countries where 'color' is spelt 'colour' and I'm glad to see www.colour.com is owned by them also. I doubt it cost as much though.

It would also be interesting to see if searching for 'colour' in the respective app stores also brings you to 'color' so that they are truly interchangeable

It's a warning sign when startups have the cash to invest in a domain name before they have traction. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

Particularly for a mobile-app - surely the site barely matters when it just links to the relevant app-store / Android marketplace.

That sounds like Scoble's take on it. http://www.cinchcast.com/scobleizer/194769

A domain is an asset, why would it be worth notably less after a few years if the startup were to fail?

Exactly: provided that $350,000 was a decent price (which doesn't seem too unreasonable) and the fair value does not decline they now have a $350,000 intangible asset on their balance sheet that will not likely decline in value.

You can't say the same for a similar amount of put into high end office furniture, for example.

c.f. cnet & com.com

For one, a glorious failure taints the name. Not many (any?) ships are called "Titanic" anymore. I tried to find good examples of famous failures having their domains reused but wasn't able to.

webvan.com still exists as part of amazon.

pets.com points to petsmart.com

An untainted domain is an asset, which is why there are many squatted domains. A tainted domain is a liability.

It sounds cool, but due to the name it's impossible to find in app store search.

Edit: I was able to find it by searching for "color camera group", though curiously, not "color group camera".

Agreed. A QR link would be nice.

"color camera group" isn't working for me, sadly.

Agreed. I just went to color.com instead which does have a link to the app store directly.

It's difficult to find because it isn't fully indexed in the App Store yet. I'm sure it will be easier when the download count increases.

It's difficult to find because it's getting 2-star ratings.

What about searching for color.com?

As of now, just searching "color" puts this at the first result.

Seems to be good now, it's showing up as the first result for 'Color' here on the Australian App Store.

seems to be doing pretty poorly on iPhone, two and a half stars.

I was going to make a jab at them about the UK and Canada, but it appears they've thought of that already.

This will become the Chatroulette of mobile photo sharing apps.

Especially in cities, where sharing photos with the people within 100 feet of you can include anyone in your 20 story apartment building. Even if the rate of obscene photos is low, just one could ruin the user experience.

What does constitute to you as obscene and why would it ruin your user experience?

Dicks, mostly.

Penises, because I don't want to see anyone else's.

Good point. I think it has to tie into your social network. Maybe you can adjust the degree of freedom -- more depth = more risk.

But the concept that people could do nude pictures and then be around the corner to actually see your reaction in real life is kind of creepy.

This thing's fuckin creepy. it uses the camera and mic to get my location as well. The tech sounds rad, but for privacy i wouldn't touch this thing with a 10 ft pole.

honest question, what does mic have to do with obtaining location information ?

I think the techcrunch article (linked on one of the comments) mentioned that if they can't get a gps/wifi signal they look at lighting (camera) and sound (mic) to determine if people are in the same location. Neat use of the technology but - yes, a bit creepy.

It's getting hammered on the App store with negative feedback. I see a 2 star average. People are complaining about connectivity issues.

So what happens if it's a complete flop, if it never takes off at all?

Then they return whatever's left of their investor's money or pivot to a more promising direction?

I hope for their sake that they don't pull a cuil.

I'm baffled and frustrated by the level of funding these guys are getting. Yes there are some interesting and smart people involved but the initial idea smacks of a solution to a non-existent problem.

I just tried the app and definitely didn't like it, it mandatory requires you to give away your location information otherwise you cannot use the app. That's not the way to go guys :S specially with the recent discussions about internet privacy...

using the app without providing your location would make you a voyeur, which is not cool.

the fact that they force you to disclose your location to use it is the first thing i've heard about this app that i like.

For some reason that makes me feel uncomfortable, heres the thing: you can share picture with the friends you have around, let's say the people that's in the same room to get "different angles of the same event", if they're already with you, what's the point of disclosing my location with the app?

I think may one of those situations where they invested completely in the team?

The founder sounds like a badass but I'm still concerned about viability and revenue strategy of the company....

Anyone try this? It is basically bump for photos.

$41M pre launch, seriously? like i mean it.. seriously? is it to the team or the product?

Burst bubble burst! Just saying....

Dislike the name. Doesn't suggest anything relevant to what the service actually does. Worse, it actively suggests something else -- something to do with color, perhaps for artists or a color-involving game. I also have a personal pet peeve of people hi-jacking existing words and trying to give them an Nth meaning. If the new meaning is at least similar to one of the existing ones, fine, especially if just in a different context or field or medium. But if the new meaning has nothing to do with the original ones, it just worsens the language for everybody. And yeah, could be useful service. May make sense for some existing bigger company or social network to buy and integrate them. But $41m for this, and this stage, feels very Bubble-y to me.

How's Apple for a name? Does exactly what it says on the tin, oh wait...

That's ...err.. apples and oranges. Apple got its name before there was a web, before search engines. Plus, Apple isn't a term that is used frequently when working with computers. What do apples and computers have in common? Nothing.

Color is too generic a term and it's already used in computer lingo. This company might be able to make Color their brand, they might be able to one day own it like Apple owns apple, but it will take years if not decades.

I'm interested in the exploits that may target this. First thing I would want to do is create a way to spoof my location in real-time and see what's going on in that place right then.

Then I would want to send everyone in that area a picture of goatse.

It seems there are already apps for that https://market.android.com/details?id=com.forgottenprojects....

Brilliant. Definitely on this.

If you see some photos of amused british people in their living room representing themselves as having been taken deep in the most self-regarding of san francisco's fashionable hangouts, that was us.

Why does your Market link not link to the app in the Market?

Especially considering I absolutely can't find it.

same here, did my best searching and still can't test it.

I think it might be out later tonight or tomorrow morning. I have been looking for it also.

I would have thought they would have included a link to the app in the android marketplace on the home page. I clicked it and it just takes you to the android marketplace home. So far no luck finding on Android...

I really don't understand why it needs $41M in funding. Its just another photo app...I think its more of hype than the actual useful content.

Well, you could say that for almost every other "startup". I believe there are some cool use cases here but I can't see how this will generate money.

Exactly what is being pointed here: http://jacquesmattheij.com/41000006+reasons+why+I+think+we+a...

Any idea why they call this app Color?

I thought the app had nothing to do with photos initially.

The only reason I read about it was that they were "given more money than Google". I wonder if that can be used as a marketing strategy. Take enough money to get yourself in the headlines and simply return it after you get it. I'm sure its illegal and it's surely unethical, but it might work.

We are at the precipitous. This changes everything.

Feels epic. We're here.

precipice

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