Color Recasts Itself as a Facebook Photo and Video App | Hacker News Reader

Color Recasts Itself as a Facebook Photo and Video App

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

13 pointstaylorbuley11 comments

I was interested in the two times he used the word "lucky."

The first time he used it to indicate he wasn't lucky (less than 10% of downloaders using Color), the second time to indicate that they could change the way facebook users interact (if the app is a success). I felt it was odd to see him use it both positively and negatively in a few paragraphs, and think it may indicate that he's not confident in this latest pivot (the first use felt more true).

This is one of the funniest stories I've read in a long time.

I think they are just going after something people really don't want. People don't want to see what their friends are doing because chances are its nothing. This appeals to 5% (the scobles) of the social world. They aren't solving a problem that sally facebook has.

That's kinda sad, really. I liked the ad hoc social network aspect. I never downloaded the app since they had no Android version when I looked. Did they ever release one?

They did. I installed it, saw that no one around me had pictures up (I was in a mall!) and uninstalled it.

I remember when they were first announced, they talked about some pretty whiz-bang features, such as using your phone's mic to determine where in a room you were relative to where another Color user was (in conjunction with the phone's GPS) so that you could algorithmically see the photos that were closest to you and that were likely taken by people near you.

Not that that sounds technologically unfeasible, but they made it sound like a current feature. The fact that their $41 million in funding is now basically an aggregation of Facebook photos plus FaceTime seems to indicate that it was complete vaporware.

See, I never got to test it. I think this is differently sad now.

>Although 1 million people downloaded the original app, barely 10 percent are still using it, said Bill Nguyen, the perennially chipper chief executive and co-founder of Color. “And that’s if I’m lucky.”

Ten percent of users returning to an app that has almost no utility whatsoever (due to so few other users using it around you). That's actually quite a success, but I'm guessing that number is bull.

Also:

>Mr. Nguyen, who described himself as a “social recluse,” said that he realized that Color needed to be more engaging and more social to lure in new users who would find it rewarding.

Facebook wouldn't have been a success if its creator hadn't released it while he was in college. It's hard to imagine Color, in its ambitious proximity-based plan, ever being successful with a CEO who doesn't get out.

Exactly. How do you define a strategy to get people more engaged with each other if you don't like people in the first place? Sure, you could be a genius marketing person who never leaves the house, but if you're designing a product, and a company, that requires intimate knowledge of the human condition, you need to practice what you preach.

It seems like a solution looking for a problem.

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