Color CEO: The Tech Justifies the $41 Million
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Wow - I bet users will gladly line up to upload photo and video to a data mining company. From the start they plan on mining their users rather than serving them. It really feels like all marketing BS when the core of the business is to track, record and mine their users.
It may be good tech, but that's a horrible user proposition and it certainly begs for a line-by-line analysis of their EULA since everything you do with the app is public.
This is the telling quote:
"Lots of people are trying to create location-based services and using GPS," said Nguyen. "The problem with GPS is that it doesn't work."
This is exactly my pointbelow -- the tech to incorporate all the sensor data you can get from phones has real-world consumer uses -- but it has tons of uses in intel as well.
They will get their patents, they will build the next google of social intelligence and they will license all this to the NSA -- if they havent already.
Sounds cool, yay. But no thanks from me.
Where I said:
"Here 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
the military now has autonomous robotic helicopters that can visually track bullets in flight.
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."
If the photos are dense enough, there's enough information to stitch together the photos into a scene you can jump around. It's really cool!
EDIT: Here's a scene in Sydney:
Google analyzes tons of data because they have too. As the parent post said, the "NSA analogy" is wrong because it has a very wrong proposition. Users use it because it solves some real problems for them. AT&T doesn't work for NSA, they works for customers and has a fiber to NSA as by-product.
You cannot compare a for-profit organization to a research facility (e.g. MSR). Such thing as you mentioned is aresearch project, which has much limitations and some of them wouldn't possibly be commercialized. It is the same skeptical as I have to hunch.com, but hunch.com solves some real needs whereas Color from what I see, is pursuit a magic ball floating in the air. And should I remind you that selling backdoor API is not a business, it is a crime.
If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product.
And yet people seem to like Google...
"It really feels like all marketing BS when the core of the business is to track, record and mine their users."
I can't help but think that this also describes Google. :)
Edit: the person that downvoted me should at least have some courtesy and explain themselves.
That said, their world domination plans are pretty awesome. I bet they come up with other ways to get you to 'soft checkin' on their platform. Just betcha. Wouldn't you like to just open an app that lets you, say, ask for contact info of people in a room with you? Like bump, but working, and low hassle? You could use it at parties, at networking events..
I'm guessing the application thoughts just keep coming for the color team.
Unfortunately, what they really can't afford is to dig into a hole based on bad PR right now; they need people out and using their app, and talking about it, hence the opening up a little bit.
That's the best explanation I can come up with the success of things like foursquare, instagram, etc. and the rise of online gaming.
There were probably assholes like us saying the same shit back in the 50s though - why do these people stay inside and watch TV when they could see ART at the Cinema!?
I think humans have an inbuilt desire to worship, or believe in, something higher than themselves. Even if such desire is deeply subconscious. It manifests itself in all sorts of ways, including Apple fanboyism. Just a theory.
Btw, I think "social" is an utterly over-hyped fad, and I've predicted this on HN in the past (I'm 24, to give perspective). We could even be looked back on "social" ten years from now, the same way we look at the internet bubble ("what were we thinking?!?").
While time has shown that the average person can find a use for Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, I still find it very difficult to see how "another" social app... and a photo-sharing one at that... is going to draw the kind of crowd that would make this extremely high valuation reasonable.
I would agree that, based on numerous comments across the web, the only reason for such a high valuation is because of possible acquisition. But this article specifically mentions that the company is not interested in being acquired, so I guess I just don't "get it".
During the dot-com bubble, "eyeballs" were becoming as important a metric for companies as "revenue" or "profit". It seems to me (and others here) that we're seeing some of the same sentiment all over again.
The fact that Color will give me a 'dynamic social graph based on who I interact with frequently' does not make me want to sign up. Then again, I might not be their target market. I currently don't have much interest in sharing photos on the internet with strangers just because they are nearby.
I think that there are plenty of people interested in tech with nothing to do with any "social" aspects - it is just that social is new to the technology field and has attracted a lot of talent and money. I used to think, and still do somewhat, that "social software" is almost its own field of interest and study - which will feed into other areas of technology but still be distinct. Thankfully there are still plenty of other engineering problems to solve elsewhere (there is, isn't there?) for people like us to work on !
The app "intelligently identifies nearby smartphones, whether at a local park or at a concert, using advanced proximity algorithms".
OK, I'm listening...go on...
"Lots of people are trying to create location-based services and using GPS ... The problem with GPS is that it doesn't work."
GPS doesn't work, really? Is there more context to this quote? Maybe CEO Bill Nguyen means that GPS doesn't always work. Like, in a huge city with signals bouncing off buildings everywhere.
OK, in that case, there's always cell-tower triangulation and/or Wi-Fi positioning. Maybe that's what he meant?
The article goes on:
"Color does things differently by collecting these various data points from the phone's sensors and then looking for proximity by looking for identical inaccuracies."
This is where my eyes start to glaze over. You don't get magic quantitative inaccuracy values from sensors, sorry. Unless you have some sort of magic real-time control experiments - you don't have that information. Am I missing something here?
Even if you can guage inaccuracies in arbitrary sensor data, how does this possibly correlate to a 3-dimensional position in space and time without GPS?
I understand and appreciate the premise and value of the app here - no-effort photo albums based on proximity, and a social graph prioritized by real-life interaction - but this article triggers my B.S. sensors in a big way.
I think the big takeaway is that it doesn't rely on it and it uses all of these signals to provide a far more accurate sense of location and accuracy. And I have to say, I'm not sure what about using more data points to get a more accurate reading would set off B.S. sensors.
What I'm curious about are how these "advanced proximity algorithms" and "sensor inaccuracies" can be used to locate co-users.
The only viable "sensor inaccuracy" example I can think of is network-based location. Mobile devices give lat/lon network location readings with error margins expressed as radii. Perhaps you could correlate users that are possibly close (e.g. users P and Q might be close, and are also experiencing a location error of X on the same cell carrier infrastructure, so let's strengthen their spatial relationship). Maybe it's another data point, but it's a pretty poor one.
Where this all falls down is with the notion that "GPS doesn't work" and implying that other non-positional sensors (e.g. accelerometers) can be used to get a location in the absence of GPS bearing.
Maybe I'm just missing an awesome, groundbreaking, (patented) aspect of their technology, or maybe there was some hyperbole involved in the article.
Anyways, sounds cool and I'll definitely try it if I get the chance.
If you forget about the photo sharing app for now, and imagine they do manage to create such a graph - it seems to me that it would be a lot more valuable than what Facebook calls a social graph - which is really more like a social game.
Imagine being being able to identify the people who are 'hubs' and 'influencers' in real life as opposed to online. Now imagine you can predict where they are going to be hanging out so that you can promote things to them, and then track the fanout as they meet people in real life. That is what Sequoia think their $41M might get them.
All the bang of Facebook, without any of the drag of data entry? And it's always freaking right, assuming all the people on your morning train into the city don't get added.
They are so right to pump money into this. Although I have to admit that the decision to spend $350K of it on an entirely unremarkable and unGoogleable domain name sort of leaves me wondering.
This is a classic problem I have in my own research at a university: in order to test the cool stuff, you have to convince people using stuff they already get. The convincing is way, way harder.
Maybe Color is just one of a suite of apps. Maybe the idea is to license the patents to Apple or Google so it all happens transparently (but the idea that my phone is silently collecting and transmitting data about me all the time makes me want to puke). However, what they've got is going nowhere fast.
I faced a similar problem with delineal.com. Like Color, my groundbreaking stuff is in the data choices, algorithms and data filtering and in my generalized approach to solving problems. I don't lead with detailed discussions of the technology because A) the vision and direction tell a more entertaining story B) The matching and filtering algorithms do not a product make. I need to build products that solve real-world problems to generate revenue.
I like the recognition they're getting for their technical work. It bodes well for me...and provides some nice hints about how to better frame my pitch... because I can say "I have technology AND useful apps".
I don't think I ever heard any Twitter execs defending their product when everyone was saying it was just for posting about your egg sandwich from the toilet.
The Onion as always is on top of things.
What part of it works, on a phone, for applications such as these? Or were you just saying, in general, GPS technology does work?
But, what is really being talked about here is much deeper spatial awareness based on a range of sensor and relational data modeling.
They are using GPS, direction, lighting, sound and finally - actual images to determine all the spatial attributes of where you are, what your surroundings are and whom else is in your vicinity -- even if you don't know them.
This is stunning.
They will be able to know which parties are groups - where they are in relation to one another etc.
If they are already using all those data-points. I am absolutely positive they are will have audio voice recognition - keyword recognition in the future as well.
There are incredible uses for this, such as "here were some highlights of the parties conversations"
What we NEED is for someone to sniff the backhaul from the client and lets look at exactly what data is leaving our devices.
I am sure they are a lot further along than vapor at this point.
Just saying you'll have tens of millions of users in 3 months doesn't make it so.
"The more you interact with someone, the more persistent that connection becomes."
Facebook already has been doing this for a couple years, but if Color sniped them on the patent by a few months then that would justify the valuation alone. Plus they have a solid team with at least a decent chance of building something themselves, which is basically just gravy if the investors have a guarantee of at least getting a 2x return by suing Facebook and a couple other companies.
If they sort out the issues plaguing 1.0 (and I think is clear they will), this seems like something that would a least catch on with that younger crowd.
Plus, cool tech from what they said here. I'm glad to learn a little about it.
Wasn't this the premise of the ending of 'Batman: The Dark Knight?'
Scary, hilarious, and amazing at the same time.
The $41mil shouldn't even be a topic right now because the VCs that funded them are some very experienced betters in the game. If they made this bet they must have seen something. Honestly I don't see anything of value right now, but then again I'm not into sharing photo's with strangers thing.
I also think they are not a social company like Twitter/Flickr but are hoping to generate enough data using their mobile apps to be able to identify various locations without gps and sell that data, sort of like that one company which maps out locations using WiFi access point names.
As for this new bubble debate and Color's $41mil, no matter what the situation you will always have a few people saying the market is good and a few people saying that the market is too weak/strong. It's like the glass half/full debate that can never go away.
That totally didn't creep me out at all.
From my experience, even general people are concerned about issues of privacy with Facebook. We in the tech crowd are certainly more aware of it and wary than the average Facebook user, but I'm pretty sure a sizable majority of (potential) users have heard at least a little bit about the creepiness or have noticed it themselves (through creepily relevant ads, "memorable status updates", etc.). However, this only really became an issue after a significant number of people already relied on Facebook, and couldn't see giving up a reliable practical good to avoid the potential threat of privacy loss. But I could really see the transparency Color is showing from the start, before they've solidified any users, negatively affecting potential users. In some sense, people became hooked to the drug of Facebook before they were aware of the drug's negative side affects; Color seems to be announcing it's a harmful drug with little high and expecting people to get hooked. I have no idea how mainstream media will react, but if this ever does become the next Facebook or Twitter, I would not at all be surprised if there were news stories warning about the privacy issues, and then people might only know it as "that thing that tracks you," and at that point I can't really see people opting into it.
Of course, you could say this about any "social startup" that thinks it will be "the next Facebook/Twitter". The investors have some reason to suspect that Color's team will be more successful than most, and those reasons include those mentioned in this article (previously successful team, new technology etc.). With the large amount of capital they are even more likely to succeed. But the chance that they will is still small, and yet it doesn't matter.
From this single data point you can't conclude anything about "the bubble". The investors' bet is that Color will be huge, not moderately successful. The chances that it will be "the next facebook" may be small (I won't put a number on it), but the potential ROI reflects it.
Pull the photos in from Flickr, Google. You don't get the initial "no content" problem, and you can just store the photos on your own server.
Right?
I really have nothing to hide that would cause me to fear the data from this app. Perhaps ignorant of what they could do (I can think of a lot of kind of creepy things) but it doesn't bother me if they know about my location surroundings, etc... Someone did say privacy matters much more when you have kids, I guess that mint be the case down the road.
It looks like they are focused on step 2 of the business plan when step 1 is broken.
We've seen over and over again that the household name big companies of today have evolved through organic growth, not through this forced process that Color is undergoing. $40 million is not going to buy you a fanatical fan base. You have to earn it.
Maybe there's some magic in the bits I'm not seeing, but I see no "tech" here that can't be churned out by a few ramen-eating guys on HN and almost zero expenditure.
Even if you've lost it and you feel the need to provision for a million dollars of DB hosting to handle the load, my plan still saves 40 million dollars.
I'd like to think there's no bubble, but then I see this...
If they build a dark-knight-like smart phone data miner, they can always sell it as a service to (or get bought by) somebody who already has traction.
Why care about traction if someone else might pay you to use theirs more effectively?
I bet they are now regretting the headline: "More money than Google."
Talk about A LOT of unwanted attention.
Valuation eh- "Our tech knows where you are". Maybe, but very likely not as well as you claim, and even if so...eh.
"Your elastic social graph can and will be used against you in a court of law"
What real capital costs changed between the $14 million they were getting before Sequoia and when they got $41 million total including Sequoia?