

Color Pivots; Bill Nguyen Fired Peter Pham - olivercameron
http://nytimes.com/2011/06/20/technology/20color.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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gerardo
Heh, it's funny, yesterday I was wondering if Color was still a thing.

It turns out it never was.

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gallerytungsten
Once again, (after viewing their demo video again) I find myself puzzled by
who Color is targeting, what their app really does, and of course how they
will make money.

It seems they're kind of a twitter for photos with ad hoc local area wireless
photo sharing. What problem does this solve?

When I take a snapshot, why would I want to share it with anyone who happens
to be in range? What makes this so appealing? I can't see any appeal, but
perhaps that's just me.

How do they make money? It seems they'll be going for some variant of
permission marketing, based on accrued data of user interests. But how does
the user benefit?

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silverlake
I think it's ad-hoc location-based social networks. So attendees at a
conference would form a social network and share comments, photos, etc. In
fact, every presentation could be it's own mini-network of people in that
room. They could sell ad space to the vendors at the conference.

They just need to find a killer use case that motivates early adopters to use
it. For example, it could be used at colleges to form networks around classes,
sports events, parties. This app would be very useful during disasters, but
you can't build a business around that. ;-)

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nhangen
This reminds me of the story about the executive in training that cost his
company several hundred thousand dollars. He goes into the boss' office and
says "are you going to fire me?"

The boss says: "Hell no, why would I fire you when I just paid $500k to
educate you!"

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pclark
They're not pivoting - they are simply iterating.

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olivercameron
"Mr. Nguyen said the company had taken the criticism to heart and charted a
new course".

"Photos might not even be a part of Color in the future, he said".

Sounds like a pivot to me.

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qq66
Most of their technology is in location. Such as the piece that listens to
your microphone and can identify the specific location you're in better than
GPS does.

They just need to find a "disease vector" (photosharing? music sharing?
sexting?) to get people to use their location technology and make themselves
available for tracking and advertising.

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rokhayakebe
Color will make it. They are smart people. Bill sold companies for a total of
$900+ M. Peter was the guy who got T-Mobile to introduce BillShrink to its
millions of subscribers and more people (through tv ads). Apparently they also
have LinkedIn former chief scientist on staff. Teams like that win. Sooner or,
maybe in this case, later.

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cfinke
Cuil will make it. They are smart people. Anna Patterson was the architect of
Google’s search index. Tom created a revolutionary search engine that
introduced automatic clustering and page analysis. Apparently they also have a
Google former technical lead on staff. Teams like that win.

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charlesju
Where does it say Bill fired Peter?

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ktsmith
_Mr. Nguyen said the company had taken the criticism to heart and charted a
new course. He fired Color’s president, Peter Pham, and its engineers are
building a new version of the app to be released later this summer._

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newchimedes
I wish they went into why they fired Peter. It seemed like a passing thought
in the article. What was he doing wrong? Seems like Bill was equally at
fault...

