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Comment by evbogue | Hacker News Reader

This kind of reminds me of the original version of the app called Color, where you'd see social posts organized by geo coordinates. Imagine being in a coffee shop and seeing a feed of every post and photo posted from within the coffee shop. The benefit being you could make friends in your area.

Does anyone else remember this app? It came out around the same era as Path.

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Thank you! Yes, I remember.

I just googled Path because I thought that was the one. But it was indeed Color I was thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs

I recall they (claimed they) had some crazy tech that used the microphone to detect if you were in the same room as other users.

Color was right up there with Juicero in terms of go-nowhere startups. IIRC they paid the better part of 1 million for the color.com domain name[1].

[1] Ah, it was a mere $350,000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs#Launch

This makes me feel a lot better about my $300 .ai domain purchase for a side project I immediately shelved, but I suppose it's the same impulse just with deeper pockets.

I remember the handwritten note taped to the door of Color's office in Palo Alto, across the street from the hamburger joint. It had something to do with the founder's principles or something.

At that point I realized it wasn't a serious company.

The last time I walked by the building it was "The Institute for the Future."

This reads like a Vonnegut story

Must have been from a more innocent time.. It sounds super cool until you think about the privacy nightmare it could be? I'm thinking about how people managed to triangulate users locations from grindr, or the cesspit of bullying that YikYak was.

Friggin foursquare! We'd voluntarily tell the world exactly where we were at any given time (and where we weren't - at our homes).

But but but!

I was Mayor of my favourite coffee shop!

MAYOR!

(I must go and add that to my LinkedIn profile...)

Isn't this bumble's bff mode?

With a LOT less users.

yeah, wow, blast from the past. I was thinking of Path while reading this also. These kind of small-scope social app attempts.

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