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Comment by flyosity | Hacker News Reader

I 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.

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When you mix location + user generated content, you need to deploy city by city.

^ When Facebook started, they deployed University by University. They understood that in order for social apps to become popular, they need a critical mass of people to work. If you're the only person in your town that tries it, you're going to have an empty social network and no stickiness.

They should at least think about expanding the 100 ft proximity to town size until it gains some traction.

Right on, a ton of these new social apps have this same problem. I remember Path 1.0 was a similar experience.

I 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 ..

While I agree that the privacy of this feels a little weird, it's always opt in, just like 4sq is opt in. If you don't intend your photos to show up at a location, don't take photos on Color.

I think he is talking about appearing on other peoples' photos on Color

Yea, similar to initial Google Wave experience.

I have a question for those who know better than me: What's the critical mass for a social network to be self-sustaining?

Even if 1 million people used Color, I could those users concentrated in a few cities. Not only does the app require a vibrant, heavily active user-base that's willing to sacrifice their privacy, but it seems only useful in areas where the population density is relatively high. A 100 foot radius is an extremely limited area.

Furthermore, what's the point of seeing other people's pictures? I find very little "social" value in the realm of location sharing. I, for one, would not approach anybody that I see in my stream. Even in Twitter, I use location based services little to never. What am I missing out on?

Someone please tell me that I am wrong, but the success of Color requires far too many assumptions and is riding on a trivial purpose. I don't see how it deserves $41 million in funding... Color would work as a novel Facebook feature but, on its own, seems pointless.

there's no absolute critical mass - what matters is how many of your most important peers use it. I'd say as soon as the probability for a random person to have a friend on said social network lies above 10-20% then you've achieved critical mass. it's a chicken and egg problem, which means you have to provide some value even if none of your friends use it - which is exactly what color is doing wrong.

I personally think they just solved a huge problem. Oh wait..what problem were they solving again?

This product reminds me of cue-cat, in the sense that it fails to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Exactly... they are only creating more of a problem, in that everyone now uses different methods to take, store and share photos. And no one organizes photos, so it is a huge mess. If only someone could address that... oh wait, we do. For less than half of what Color spent on a domain name, we build our Pixamid app...

Eff that problem solving thinking! This is hip inner circle echo chamber visionaire big capital sponsored royalty man, they think ahead, its not about solving, its about creating, creating problems. Number one, how to recover 40 million.

It would seem pretty short-sighted for the developers to not have realized this though (though I wouldn't say the same for venture capitalists and media). I'm guessing they must have figured this out, but just don't have a solution for it yet.

For my own startup-wannabe, I had to pivot because of the same problem: the app would only be useful if millions of people were using it, the way it was originally conceived.

Maybe it would help to increase the proximity radius dynamically so you always get results. It probably would have made your first-run user experience better, even if the photos had been taken farther away (same city, same state, or same country).

color's cold start issue reminds me of the zune's wi-fi sharing feature, even before it got neutered by the recording industry.

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