The real reason people are mocking Color...
projectidealism.com
projectidealism.com
But should we generate too much buzz, it may become self-sustaining :-(
Btw., perhaps the 41mln investment isn't just about providing necessary funding, but also about giving people 41 million reasons to generate even more buzz?
Not when it revolves entirely around data mining and hype.
No need a celebrity type success here (where ``celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness'').
Anyway, thanks for pointing out my post could be mis-understood that much.
I'm not arguing that it will be a success - it just seems sensible to wait for the outcome before passing judgement on whether the investment was worthwhile.
Let this particular business succeed on its merits, just like the average start-up.
Surely one of those 'merits' is having the wiles to raise large amounts of funding and spend it appropriately, including on mindshare?
Everyone whose on this "are we still talking about color" thing is starting to get on my nerves. Theres still LOTS of mileage in it - more write ups, VC opinions, yada yada.
Its how the world works. They just raised $41m, one of the largest pre-launch rounds. Expect to hear about them. Saying "are we still talking about color" doesn't make you cool. Nobody cares if your "over it because your so hooked in to the tech scene".
If you don't want to read about it, don't click on the link.
I lack any blogging experience; if I had any, I'd try to give some counter-coverage, to promote competitors.
I regret not making that reasoning clear in the original post.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/time-between-thing-being-am...
1. Easy to say/spell. I work for a startup where I have to spell the name of the company every time I talk to someone. We are a medical company so its not a big marketing issue, but having to explain your site is Colr.com or TheColorApp.com instead of just "Color" will impede consumers.
2. It makes you seem like a real company with the resource to own a short, properly spelled name rather than yet another creatively spelled SocNet. Talk to some non-early adopters and you'll see how important this can be.
My take is that most people are mocking the amount of money being spent on what is initially seen as a photo sharing service rather than a platform that will allow people to quickly assemble social networks of real life friends. in different contexts.
1st User Experience:
- open App Store
- search for "Color"
- install
2nd - nth User Experience:
- click the "Color" button on your iPhone
In unrelated news: a friend of mine casually referred to her boss as a 'green' on Saturday... apparently it is the result of popular personality test that everyone in the company has to take. The result (one or more 'colors') is part of their email signature for internal correspondence.
Business Networking - Go to a conference and create an ad hoc social network. You are basically automating what Fridge and Lanyrd are doing now.
Neighborhood Social Networking - Need to organize a carpool or soccer practice schedule? Moms can set up a network with their phones while sitting in the stands watching their kids play.
Same for schooling, retailing, and dozens of other opportunities where you might want to let people communicate then sell them stuff. If nothing else it might be so it is easier for advertisers to remember and more easily access the self serve ad mechanisms the founders described.
I could see all of those eventually having a traditional "Web" page though it might be assembled and interacted with very differently than a traditional soc net.
Do you really think that an entire group of middle-aged moms would all download an app on their smartphones to co-ordinate carpools? No! They don't want to deal with technology. Most likely they will just talk person to person (what a novel idea) or use their existing email list from the team.
Don't mean to get too personal, but this kind of thinking is one of the disadvantages from living in Silicon Valley. You become disconnected from how the majority of people live and interact with technology
I think I know the test.
I assume they key off of selection criteria from the users (ie. most users installed X after searching for Y, so rank X higher for Y), but it could also be that their company name and app name are both "Color".
> 2. It makes you seem like a real company with the resource to own a short, properly spelled name...
This is not a very hard problem to solve.
kragen@inexorable:~/devel$ cat shortnames.py
#!/usr/bin/python
# Pick unused domain names. Kragen Javier Sitaker, 2011.
import socket, random, itertools
def lookup(domain):
try:
return socket.getaddrinfo('www.'+domain, 80)
except socket.gaierror:
return None
# We try an unlikely-to-exist domain in case our ISP engages in a
# man-in-the-middle attack on DNS traffic.
failing_dns_response = lookup('jaoiwgjaioawjio'+'aioj.org')
words = [line.strip() for line in file('/usr/share/dict/words')]
short_words = [word for word in words if 0 < len(word) <= 6]
print "Considering %d short words." % len(short_words)
for ii in range(20):
while True:
sld = random.choice(short_words) + random.choice(short_words)
if len(sld) <= 2:
continue
domain = sld + '.' + random.choice(['com', 'org', 'net'])
if lookup(domain) != failing_dns_response:
continue
print domain
break
kragen@inexorable:~/devel$ time ./shortnames.py
Considering 22221 short words.
LippiSeurat.org
crownseagle.net
JoleneMable.org
anorakbarf.org
baitdepend.org
opticbib.org
elopevictim.org
maniacAbner.org
glandhanker.org
nthprissy.com
dumpsSandra.org
measlyhafts.com
cassiaLaud.net
avowstarots.com
Elvianoun.org
duchyfeisty.net
dualgales.net
hikingpinup.com
dirgesBarnes.net
tillchars.net
real 0m15.749s
user 0m0.140s
sys 0m0.028s
I seriously doubt this. AFAIK most people have 7+-2 "registers" of short term memory, which has strong implications for stuff like the maximal # of digits in a phone number - but it doesn't affect the number of phone numbers you can remember, or names of people, or ball players etc.
As for "real company name": Google, Yahoo, eBay, Skype, Paypal, Wikipedia, MySpace, Hotmail, Amazon, Apple, Dell, Starbucks... Company names can become meaningful without starting this way.
Domains are still very important for a number of reasons (prestige being an obvious one). Buying the domains before announcing the round of funding probably saved them a good deal of money too.
It's a drop in the bucket if you look at the big picture.
Facebook paid $200k for their domain a few years ago. Imagine what they would have to shell out now had they decided against it back then.
- then $7.5 Million (name only)
- then $350M (name and website)
I personally believe this was a horrible investment in a horrible product with a horrible idea, but to rip on the domain name purchase really seems like the least of all possible concerns.
No one is going to search for Color and find a photo app, they are going to search for the name of whatever the cool app people are talking about is, so for quick, cheap SEO they would have been better off calling it MonkeySponge or something.
The whole point of the post was "The domain name fiasco is the indicator of a much bigger and deeper problem"
Further, it shows that they're spending with the notion of huge scale long before there's any sign that's necessary. (It's what sunk a lot of dot bomb companies.) Yes it might be cheaper now, but it's a risky way to spend their money especially when a brandable term is both more valuable and less expensive.
Apple's branding value has followed from their high quality and consumer-accessible products. No amount of marketing will support a crappy product. Focusing on marketing over quality is how products die a spectacular death. Remember Kin?
1978
With $41M, color has more than enough cash to pivot onto something that will work - but for me the real reason color hit a big fail at launch was the same reason cuil was - the level of expectation people had about the company due to the fact they raised so much/had so much hype. If color had a different name, and was written by a small hardy team from y combinator or whatever, I think people who have still had some scepticism but would have been generally positive.
I, like a lot of people, looked at that app and thought, "this is $41M of development?".
They can still pivot and do something interesting, but I think this is one of those times that "release early, release often" does not apply. It's a great app for when your at a big event, but as I asked on twitter, what if there is no there, there?
What if Facebook was named "friends.com"? Sure, it probably would have been cool to have such a simple domain name, but Facebook is more effective because the name signals purpose.
In short, it's not only about the "prestige" in a name, it's about what that name signals. Color signals nothing.
-------
What you fail to mention is that they got by on thefacebook.com for a while before they ponied up and got the current domain ... at that point it was clear they were going to be huge so it didn't matter.
Spending $500k on a domain out the gate instead of getting 5 badass developers working on making your product rock, is stupid to me, but thats just me.
They have $40.5 Million left for developers and if need be can raise even more. The question is: would 5 more developers make a difference?
1. Nguyen names company 'Color' and buys color.com
2. Sequoia hears about Color, contacts them
3. Sequoia gives them $14 million
4. Other investors want in, and keeps wanting in
money until the total size of the round hits $41 million.
And Nguyen chose the name Color as a tribute to Apple: http://www.quora.com/Color-Labs-startup/Why-is-Color-named-C...
A tribute to Apple's color logo from the Apple II. This computer changed my life when I was seven (also a reference to another company name I've used.)
My dad bought one from ComputerCraft run by Billy Ladin in Houston. He was one of the first computer resellers back in 1977. In an odd twist, I meet him in an elevator 15 years later and worked for him. He introduced me to the Web.
Working at Apple was a dream. Color's name is a tribute to Apple.
I'm not sure of the timeline as to when the various investments came in. From what I understand though, they had $14 million and then Sequoia got in: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/03/24/sequoia-to-co...)
So, you'd be right, it looks like Sequoia did get in after the purchase of the domain, which could indeed indicate that the domain helped them in some way.
Best rebuttal by far.
Though, one could also argue they might not have been so eager to accept Sequoia's capital if they weren't spending $500,000 on things like domain names.
Also the name is vague enough to encompass any pivots. It's a great name, probably one of the best domains you could have for an app in the happiness business.
It was expensive, sure, but they have the money. And corporate accounting probably sees it as an appreciating asset anyway.
If you have $41 million I can think of few better purchases than a really great, memorable, meaningful, happiness-associated domain name.
Also it has netted them tons of free advertising. Think all the "The iPad will fail!!!!!!!" blog posts hurt Apple's bottom line? No one _really_ listens to naysayers. Pessimists are just an alternative form of advertising.
Remember when Barnes and Noble started an online bookstore and nobody knew if it was barnesnoble.com or barnesandnoble.com or barnesandnobles.com or barnesandnobles.com or barns-n-nobles.com or whatever?
You can be quite successful with a brand name that's a catchy neologism, but if I had the kind of investment they had I wouldn't feel bad about dropping that much money for a really good domain.
The product: not bad. If you can actually network with it (and I have), then it's actually quite interesting.
The domain name: Not expensive compared to the money they raised.
The funding round: Not a shady play, it seems like a few big partners are just genuinely excited about the product.
So all I'm left with is that people don't like the number $41m, and now they're doing anything they can to to justify that initial judgement by tearing at an otherwise good product.
Being tech-savvy, I'd never just type in keywords and append .com, but I think I'm in the minority on this one.
I wish more commentators would acknowledge this basic USP before waxing lyrical about implied social graphs and relationship revolutions.
Incidentally, the other day it occurred to me what a big deal the iPad's back facing camera is. Apple want you to take your iPad to parties and gatherings, cause it's crowd-gathering appeal is unreal. You're more likely to do that if you can use it as a camera. At least if the party's in your own house. It basically transforms more social events into live Apple adverts.
Also I think diapers.com makes shitloads of money.
What you can say, however, is that diapers.com sold for shitloads of money.
My post was written, not from the perspective of someone that just got $41 million. But instead, how I would feel if I invested that money in a company and that's what they decided to spend it on.
Also, I'm not sure how much of the quality discussion and debate that HN is known for you can expect on the 18th submission critical of color to hit the front page in the last few days.
As consumers we are so used to buying stuff and then wearing it all the way out- clothing, computers, soap, food. But when a business invests in capital, that capital holds value. When a textile plant closes, it liquidates its looms, it doesn't just write them off as an expense.
"when a problem arises, they're going to attack it with the blunt instrument of more capital, instead of the creative labor"
That's quite a stretch - regardless of whether or not you think the name is good strategy.
It reminds me of the 90s, where people would spend all this time thinking about a good name/domain name for their websites, and put only secondary thought into the quality of their site or its content.
Focus on making the product really good first, then buy the domain if you really have to, and if it's clear that your product is successful and lasting.
As a final thought, why not color.me, color.it, or color.us?
To mention thefacebook.com and twitr.com as examples completely undermined his entire point. Both of those networks changed their domain name prior to their user base exploding. Coincidence? Strategy? I don't know but there must have been some reasoning behind it and it seems to be paying off for them.
I would justify the 41MM in funding as; a) a great long terms cash reserve b) instant fame and media spotlight c) zero need for marketing spend d) an ambitious vision, with slightly more chance than before the 41MM,a to come to fruition.
Sorry to go against the grain, but that's my take. If all goes down the gutter, then I hope the founding team took some money off the table (but not likely they needed it).
The publicity that this move bought them only extends to the insular tech news/blogger community.
Do you really think JoeSixPack or Kerligirl13 reads TechCrunch? And even if they did, do you think they'd try out the app based on the amount raised?
I'm sometimes guilty of this type of thinking myself, but really, stop thinking like a geek when it comes to marketing.
While I obviously have no data, I would vouch that mydiapersstore.com would have way less credibility in customer eyes.
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AbbL7nVHKW7SYWpkdGN...
Amazon bought (the parent company of) diapers.com less than six months ago for $500M+.
domains don't matter because ppl don't expect you to have the most obvious of the domains. So in the situation if someone actually comes out and gets diapers.com or color.com ..then it's really an awe-factor.
their app (in functionality) failed and that is the only reason they are struggling. other than that their PR stunts (we raised huge money, we got great domains, we have great team, we have everything mobile/social/local) worked like a charm. no one can stop talking about them.
With this kind of publicity, you've got an uphill battle to convince people to use it - assuming you can improve it. Which the OP argues you COULD do if you diverted your PR money into actually working on the app.
I don't think there's much of an "awe-factor" in domain names. I heard the guy who made Instapaper interviewed, and he said that his domain and app name don't even make sense for his app; it was a domain he'd originally registered for a different idea. But nobody cares because they like the app.
I think the OP's point is valid: they could have easily come up with a short, memorable name, gotten it cheap, and hired 3 more developers.
Is it worth many thousands of dollars? Probably...if you have the cash.
p.s. the URL of the color.com basher is idealprojectgroup.com