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I think his point is that the photo sharing is little more than a proof of concept. The exciting thing is the automation of ad-hoc networking. The internet collapses geography, but as a result it does a poor job of many tasks at the local level - search for 'Bob's diner' and you may find that you're just on the wrong side of the block, or you might get info on cheap flights to some completely other city containing a more famous restaurant with the same name.

The technology underlying Color seems like a much-needed metric for establishing spatial (and by implication, temporal) relevance. An accurate and behavior-based metric of relevance, as opposed to one based on self-selection via search/signup, would be very, very easy to monetize. Say you're in the fashion business. You could buy online ads to reach people who search for fashion-related stuff online, but wouldn't you rather reach people who spend a lot of time in the same places as your target demographic?




You're selling the technology to me. It sounds interesting. But so was that iPhone app that translated Spanish out of OCR'd video in real time, rendering the results back in the correct perspective. Shouldn't the real-life Babelfish be worth more --- and I mean, to the market --- than Color?


I had the same thought (roughly)..

Their concept of an "elastic" network that naturally decays your connections with people you associate with less is a perfect complement to a network that self-organizes in the first place.




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