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Comment by Tycho | Hacker News Reader

The app: take pictures with your phone, instantly/automatically upload them to the cloud, meanwhile see what other pics other people nearby are taking.

The experience: a frenzy of sharing entertaining photos and having fun anytime, anywhere, with anyone.

The reality: a classier, more respectable and 'innocent' rival to Grindr.

The money: push advert pics into the localized photo streams, even making them geographically contextual, exposing them to an already captive audience, who may even react and start talking about it (the advertised product/service) on the spot.

Actually, have to admit, I really like the idea.

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Still not sure I understood: I assume the point is to share (currently only photos) with people near you in both space and time. Why would you do that? You're right there. You can directly see them right?

Or is it something where you go somewhere and you can see photos taken at this location 3 months ago or something? (ie, they use space but not time for proximity)

Having actually looked at the thing on App Store, I realized that it also solves very nicely a classic problem of social photography: bunch of friends/family at a gathering, all taking pictures, 'you take one with me in it' etc., but then everyone goes home with a separate set of photos.

Sure, Facebook, Bebo etc. alievate that problem somewhat by having people upload their photos and sharing with their friends list, so you might eventually get to see everyone's photos. Assuming they bothered to upload and tag. But Color guarantees that everyone walks home with The Definitive Album for that event, with no extra effort required.

From a user perspective, that's a pretty big win. Just put Color on your grand-dad's phone and suddenly he gets to join the fun, without the whole registering/tagging/uploading/friending/browsing rigmarole.

People are wierd. I don't even look at facebook photos but other people are obsessed with them. Then there's those sites where people (young women mostly) look at photos of people going in to local nightclubs (ie they actually pose for the shot then it's uploaded), and they spend time looking at what fashion items people were wearing. Anyway I imagine in this case the focus is on right there, right then, and the whole thing will be driven by flirtation. Think about it like using technology to broaden the radius of effective flirtation from a few meters to a few dozen meters.

I think the idea is good, I just don't understand why anything you've mentioned requires VC at all, much less that magnitude.

The thing will only be great if lots of people use it, and it works seemlessly. For THAT, surely you do need quite a lot of capital (marketing and hosting/bandwidth). They could slowly and organically grow the userbase, but to have any hope of fast-forwarding through that phase, large funding is the only option, no? Maybe also deals with phone manufacturers and carriers.

Sounds like a good idea but will people use it long term? I doubt it. The only draw to use the app all the time is for entertainment. If people don't get entertainment at least 80%* then they will probably stop using it.

*I just made that figure up obviously but I hope you get my point.

The money, part 2: paid accounts that allow you to hide the implicit activity track that you never asked all these strangers to record. Dont have an account? Too bad, your face is out there on everyone else's phones.

The money: push advert pics into the localized photo streams, even making them geographically contextual, exposing them to an already captive audience, who may even react and start talking about it (the advertised product/service) on the spot.

I wasnt aware of this aspect... I must say - I think it is brilliant if it works, as the geographically contextual adverts has so far been an uncracked nut.

Further - imagine a social groupon-like play where your pics of the ambiance and blast you and your friends are having while eating at [#ThisRestaurant] BECOME the ad and coupon to entice others to come and eat there... click on this photostream of [#ThisRestaurant], watch it then see a deal for you too coming here and having such a greeat experience for a discount coupon...

Yes, they could charge for 'commercial' accounts, so that resteraunts etc. are allowed to push coupon/adverts into the local stream.

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