At least now we know why Color really got that funding
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
Here's another post about a photo-taking application earlier this week:
Personally, I disagree with Gruber: Facebook and Foursquare seem to be evidence that people will gladly give up their personal data in exchange for a "social" experience. But whether Gruber is right or wrong is not the point I was responding to, it's whether Gruber would hypothetically like the app if it was hypothetically bought by Apple.
This is irrelevant to what he's saying now. Even if he does like everything Apple does and does hate everything Apple doesn't do, appealing to his bias is the textbook definition of an Ad Hominem:
An ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem,
is an attempt to link the validity of a premise
to a characteristic or belief of the opponent
advocating the premise.
In that case, dismissing him because of his bias might rob us of a valuable insight.
In fact, the way I read flyt's comment is that flyt actually agrees with Gruber, but is predicting that if Apple were to have something to do with Color, Gruber's cynicism would disappear.
Unless I'm misunderstanding flyt, this was in no way an ad hominem argument.
It most certainly is ad hominem. The premise of Gruber's post is approximately that, based on the latest information we're learning about it, there's something distasteful about Color or its value proposition to consumers. The original commenter seeks to discredit Gruber's implied argument by suggesting he's an Apple apologist, that his industry analysis is not based on facts at hand but by inherent biases. This is right in the sweet spot of ad hominem. Just read the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on ad hominem to confirm.
Regardless, it's certainly poor form and disappointing to see so highly upvoted.
(You really should do "Who's on first?" sometime. :-)
I wonder how much that cost them...
I'm also curious what how his response (or others') would have been changed had Lisagor shot an ad for them. But, as a data point, Gruber hasn't linked to at least one of Lisagor's ads. (The 3D one for jawbone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exm981pbrJg)
So, I guess it's like Color in that it uses pictures, except that it's different in just about every other way.
In fact, I don't think flyt is claiming that this wasn't the reason for Color's funding. flyt seems to merely be noting that, while Gruber sounds cynical and disapproving in this post, Gruber would probably approve of and attempt to justify the product if Apple were to acquire Color.
However, I assumed (possibly incorrectly) that somebody would suggest that insulting the author in a thread purportedly discussing the author's words is an indirect way of discrediting the words.
I could be wrong, in which case I would suggest that such a comment is not contributing to the discussion.
The time I question someone's reputation is when they appeal to authority themselves. For example, if I were to write "I've been in business for twenty years, take it from me that where startups are concerned, _____," then it's perfectly appropriate to point out that I haven't worked in silicon valley.
After all, my reputation is part of my argument, so questioning it is questioning my argument. Other than that, if I say something about business, arguing that I boast of being a Socialist says nothing about whether my words about business are useful. If you "take them with a grain of salt," you are the one who may be missing out.
This principle is not new to HN. Paul Graham wrote about it explicitly in his essay "How to Disagree:"
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Have a look at what he has to say about DH0, Name calling, and DH1, Ad hominem. You may not like the National Enquirer, but if they were to write about a startup, it should be possible to disagree with their suppositions without resorting to questioning the piece solely because they published it.
Sad.
The Christian candidate listens to the Muslim candidate make a point, then says loudly and clearly, "Folks, he's a Muslim!"
He doesn't say "And therefore he's wrong," but nevertheless it is rhetorical device for discrediting his opponent and getting the audience to ignore his point.
Wikipedia calls this Ad hominem abuse:
Ad hominem abuse (also called personal abuse or personal attacks)
usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponent
in order to invalidate his argument, but can also involve
pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or
actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument.
This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and
even true negative facts about the opponent's personal
character have nothing to do with the logical merits of
the opponent's arguments or assertions.
How is this comment interesting? It’s not about what Gruber is discussing, it just attacks and doesn’t even provide evidence for its assumption.
Such comments are not uncommon and I hate them with a passion. A snide, short remark, picking up a popular sentiment without any attempt of providing evidence for the same (“The New York Times has a liberal bias anyway.” – “Fox News is filled with fascists!”) — that’s just spam as far as I’m concerned.
Whether or not services where the user is the product can be valuable for the same is a very interesting question and you could write 1,000 word essays about it — but instead this crap made it all the way to the top.
Why exactly do you think that subpar articles must automatically lead to bad discussions? That’s far from a given for me. The topic – users as products – is certainly interesting and touches on a whole host of issues that are traditional HN lore, from Google’s business model to startup monetization.
As I said, eloquent 1,000 word essays that emphatically disagree with Gruber’s position are certainly possible. Instead there’s spam.
Frankly, the Hacker News I want to read is one where the top comment is not a personal attack, regardless of whether people agree on whether it qualifies as ad hominem argument.
An "irrelevant personal attack" and an argument that relies on one are equally undesirable to me.
-"Straw man"
-"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
-"A bad workman blames his tools" (this one is on the rise)
Please let me know the URL for that piece.
And if you're not John Gruber of Daring Fireball, then please remove the lies on your profile page.
We all saw how well that worked out for Slide. My guess is that Color will see a similar fate. It's unlikely you'll build a great social photo sharing application if that's not your primary focus.
For now they have cash, a great network and PR buzz that can kickstart traction.
In terms of product development, it's unfortunate they've raised so much money so early in their lifecycle. A cash surplus can really muck up the natural evolution of a product. e.g. you hire too fast and and up with a staff of 100 people all trying to justify their existence by pulling, pushing and shoving the product. No matter how strong a leader you are, it's tough to control that situation.
My prediction, and I don't feel good saying this, is that Bill and his team are going to do a lot of innovation that won't evolve into a business but will provide much inspiration for other businesses that will succeed.
I don't think many people understand how advertisers eat this stuff up. When they start throwing money around again (probably soon), you bet the big guys (like Color?) will repeat the benefits.
All publicity is good publicity for Color right now and following Slide's lead is exactly what it's meant to do.
The people who stand to lose are VCs and their accredited investors. Legitimate companies with actual revenues should be able to get funding even if the VC funds leave.
One downside is that VC money is determining where the software developers go, which could lead to suboptimal allocation of skilled labor. However, some of these heretofore unprofitable ventures provide real value to the public (ie Twitter).
And who knows, maybe in some capacity it works out - I believe the Slide team at Google is responsible for the launch of Disco.
--
We also collect pictures, videos, comments, and actions you take through the App (“Content”), and information on your location. When our App is active, your Device provides periodic updates to our server of your location, which allows us to show you fresh Content based upon where you are at that moment. We share your Content with others. Sharing Content publicly with others from different locations is what this App is about. If you find this objectionable, please consider not using our App or Site.
And how long after that before Apple drops Color from their App Store?
So GPS spoofing would allow you to flood some area with a feed but for how long, you need to fake so many things. And you won't get connected to someone unless they mutually take a photo.
It's very clever in it's ability to naturally prevent cheating. Which brings us back to why it's so creepy.
I'm not gonna lie. I'm too much of a futurist to not think the data it collects isn't gonna be freaking powerful/cool.
Seriously, I think people are seriously overthinking the photo sharing aspect. That's just the first thing they could think of that seemed like it would have mass appeal, but I imagine the company has little to no interest in private photos or in tracking individual users.
Here's how I see the possible future applications. You go somewhere and use your phone en route. Your phone knows approximately where you are and have been recently with a fair degree of detail. Rather than uploading that information to a server and scaring people away from using it, it listens to a stream of numbers from a server, which represent various different location and/or environmental criteria. The phone matches these with what it knows about itself based on where you've taken it, as if it were playing bingo. Every so often it gets a good match, and then uses that as a hash to look up a particular commercial message - one that has a high probability of being relevant to the owner of the phone based on where they are, where they're going, or where they have an established trail.
So you're traveling up the escalator in a shopping mall, when suddenly your phone shrugs (tm). What is it? That obscure thing you like and searched for last week is in a store 2 minutes walk away. Hardly anyone buys those, so if you go there in the next hour they'll give you 20% off; otherwise it goes back to the wholesaler.
What I find fascinating about Color, though, is that I can open the app in downtown Palo Alto and actually see photos of startups nearby, peoples' lunches, offices, whiteboards, window views, and so on. Mobile/GPS-based photography is an idea that has been tried in the past, but seemed to have never taken off due to lack of traction. Surely too early to tell, but perhaps the high publicity attracted here will actually make it possible for this one?
If Color takes off, and is used carelessly, it could become the single greatest social engineering weapon ever made. Who needs to sneak into your competition's office when you can just get within 150 meters and fire up an app. I would expect more secure organizations to outright ban it.
The thing about FB is that it was useful and nice. It brought a circle of people who you knew but had lost sight of back into the realm of visibility, which - as it turned out - was something a lot of people really liked. Only after it had reached critical mass did the privacy aspect start becoming a concern.
Color, on the other hand, doesn't seem to do anything truly new AND beneficial. At the same time, the privacy issue (read: creep factor) is immediately obvious. Also, unlike FB - which relied on Ivy league students to be early adopters - Color seems to be going after a very different group of people for initial validation. And those people are rapidly concluding that this thing is an odious turd of the very first order.
a 42$ million investment, I would be curious about any thoughts on how a company would make a profit from that investment. Other than selling information about it's users.
I think the gotcha would be "Oh the company is NOT selling customer information!" So that's how they are doing it. This article seems like they just uncovered some new revelation.
And if the data mining stuff is good, they don't even need you to download their trojan horse. They can just license the tech to Facebook and leverage their installed base.
EDIT: Perhaps Twitter is the best fit as a licensee - huge installed base on smart phones, and apparently can't data mine their way out of a wet paper bag, if the #dickbar fiasco is any indication.
- (void)imagePickerController:(UIImagePickerController *)c
didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo:(NSDictionary *)info
As an aside, I'm kind of surprised that there's no easy way to add EXIF data with AssetsLibrary or UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(). I would have sworn that there was one before I went and looked just now.
Others have already shown how easy is to de-anonymize a social graph from public datasets[couldn't find the relevant paper]
Seems like it's easier on Android, but I'm not certain, just googled a bit.
Device ID they don't seem to care about; I send it in my app's User-Agent and I've survived several approvals. That's uniquely identifiable, but at least you can't call the user. As you suggest, most apps pop up contacts and have you pick yourself, it seems.
I sent a tweet to them yesterday, but got no response. https://twitter.com/#!/tenaciousJk/status/51033367050846208
edit: group response to the below
No geo-ad platform has this low barrier to entry with this high of an incentive. Simply snap a pic and it's recorded and you're "checked in" if you will. You're doing something you want to be doing: recording your event, people you're with, etc. With 4S and Gowalla you have to want to check-in. Checking in is the app - not recording your memory by way of a picture/video. Sharing pictures is the biggest social app on the web.
The only problem is, these people are doing it wrong. A location-based app that serves deals shouldn't collect data in indirect ways.
(BTW, Gruber blogged the "you are the product" last Sept.) http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/11/reece-iad
color.com
50.17.223.168
50.17.223.164
colour.com
50.17.223.168
50.17.223.164 ~$ for x in colo{,u}r.com; do echo $x; dig +short $x; done $ host color.com; host colour.com"The next transformative development, a picture-sharing application. A place where you view pictures that coincide with your social life. It is the true digitalization of real life. You don't just go to a party anymore. You go to a party with a digital camera, and then your friends relive the party online. And tagging."
It's just amazing what you can do with $41mm, right?
Bruce Wayne is Nguyen and we are Lucius Fox, but in this case there is no Joker to catch.
> Then it will select the best picture and put it to the top of the photo feeds of people most interested in that image (like fans at the ballpark)
Great idea, but I don't think I've ever seen a description be so hand-wavey. You might as well put "Then some magic happens" there. Some details on how this happens (face recognition? social voting? views?) would be nice.
edit: I guess I should RTFA. It's still really high level, but later in the article Nguyen explains that they use views to measure photo quality.
On the other hand i need to say i was shocked to read what Color was about because it was so close to my start-up gold "idea" (don't ask what? :-) ). But more the time pass more i feel their project is so far of what we'd be doing.
I whish they understand that they can't succeed in this way, they can collect user's data like all those social networks does, but in exchange they need to provide something in exchange.
Seems like the goal of color is to aggregate vast amounts of real world data, like the Google of physical life.
Anyways, to get at that real world data they crave, they're gonna need tons of users, and if they ever get even one tenth of a percent of what Google has I'd be shocked.
they're gonna need tons of users
No idea if they can actually pull this off, but thought the Longitude Prize story is cool (thank you, "Stuff You Should Know" podcast, for mentioning it earlier this year).
(Yes, you can slide the photo left to remove it, but it'd still show up in my stream!)
This is almost the opposite strategy to Yuri Milner, who is spreading his bets out over many companies. However, this strategy is no less valid. I say almost because the investors can make many (tens of) bets this size and still succeed in making money.
given the choice of being the idiot buying twitter at $5M or $5B, ill take $5M please
Yuri Milner's strategy makes far more sense. Where is the hedging of risk by putting $40 million in a single company that's still seed stage at best?
As for one strategy making more sense, you cannot simply assert that when you have no numbers to back that up.
You cannot hedge a single bet by definition. Clearly the hedging of risk takes place in the other investments of the companies Bain Capital, Sequoia, and Silicon Valley Bank.
I have no inside knowledge of what Color is doing, nor do I think it's particularly likely that they'll succeed in becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry. But it doesn't have to be likely, when your ROI is potentially so high.
I can't give numbers, because they are simply impossible to quantify at this stage. (Note I said 2016, which is about the same time it'd take for Color to ramp up to its full potential.) My point is, Color is a long shot.
> nor do I think it's particularly likely that they'll succeed in becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry. But it doesn't have to be likely, when your ROI is potentially so high.
"potential" is the weasel word here. You can't possibly begin to anticipate ROI numbers for a particular investment at the stage Color is in. And you most certainly don't pump $40 million in a company if you think it's unlikely they'll succeed in becoming a multi-billion dollar industry.
This is all just a bit WTF-ish.
In similarity to color, their initial valuation and largess of funding was due to the history of their founders, and the perceived "hotness" of their target market.
Still around, but have never managed to do much of anything.
on the other hand, suprised I haven't seen the obvious 'paedo/stalker threat' brought up yet. it's not data mining you'd need to worry about, it's individual predatory users
I understand what you're getting at, but I would submit this isn't the secret thing that only a few people can see that will sink the product, it's a pretty blindingly obvious thing that everybody including the Color team plainly sees. If they do ship something that makes the "paedo/stalker threat" easy to implement they'll deserve the resulting PR conflagration.
That`s brilliant :) Great post john.
A "circle R", on the other hand, means that you have a federally-registered trademark. Which, after a bit of research at USPTO.gov, it appears they have (no surprise):
Word Mark COLOR, Goods and Services, IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer application software for social networking services; computer application software to facilitate social networking services by use of camera firmware in mobile devices; computer application software for sending, receiving, storing and organizing audiovisual, videographic and written data by use of camera firmware in mobile devices; computer application software to facilitate social networking services by use of location based data
IC 045. US 100 101. G & S: online social networking services; providing a web site to facilitate social networking services by use of camera firmware and geolocation software in the mobile devices of others
Serial Number 85222392, Filing Date January 20, 2011, Owner (APPLICANT) Jackson Labs, Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 201 Hamilton Avenue Palo Alto CALIFORNIA 94301, Attorney of Record Julia Spoor Gard
There are 3 other live trademarks for "Color," in the categories of Hair Color, printed goods, and plastic display racks.
IC 045. US 100 101. G & S: online social networking services; providing a web site to facilitate social networking services by use of camera firmware and geolocation software in the mobile devices of others.
That's it for their trademarks, at least under the company name Jackson Labs, Inc. Which leads me to believe that's the only product they've currently got cooking.
I think this 'data mining' revelation could just well be the 'death knell' ?
Yeah there sure is nothing there that 'marketers' could use right?