

How Many Mulligans Does Color Get? - erikpukinskis
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/29/how-many-mulligans-does-color-get/

======
JacobAldridge
Ok- so I was one of the thousands near the Palace on Friday, and used it as an
opportunity to properly test color in a public situation. It failed.

If you've ever tried to send a text message from a concert or football match,
you'd understand the first issue: needing to be online to use the app gives it
woeful performance when 500,000+ people are trying to simultaneously access
cell networks in a confined space. The Facebook App ground to a halt and
messages took hours to get through: real time photo sharing app? No chance.

As a consequence of this, we (I got my beautiful wife to use it as well, so we
had a base group) kept getting dropped from the group. By the end of the day,
there were five members of the group- but most of our photos were added to our
solo group instead! So we saw few photos from others, even ourselves.

Not being easily connected also sucked battery life as the app seemed to be
constantly trying to geo locate. We killed it half way through the day, when
we had to turn our phones off to preserve battery.

I can see potential here- that's the mulligan on offer. At my next conference-
smaller crowd and something stronger in common than our head of state- this
could be useful. But sharing my photos through a confusing interface that
doesn't work in big crowds and is supposed to only add value in big crowds?
Not again.

As for the 500 photos- we ended up with 32 in our group and another dozen that
ended up in our solo accounts. Did the app recognise and add them?

Sent from phone so apologies for typos, if any.

~~~
arethuza
Have you tried searching for yourself in the BBC high hi-def crowd picture
taken from the Palace?

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13200114>

~~~
JacobAldridge
Seems to need flash so will check from laptop next week- thanks for the link.
I'm blurred in the background of one low-res BBC shot and also made the ITV
news background, which made for a laugh at our after party.

------
foobarbazetc
Pfft. Who has talked about Color since their launch? Absolutely nobody except
HN and TechCrunch.

I'm going to tell you why no one in the UK used Color: 1) no one cares for
another photo sharing app -- they have Facebook, and, 2) it's misspelled. :)

~~~
astrec
I know your quip about the misspelling is a joke, but I think their branding
will be problematic throughout the Commonwealth (perhaps less so in western
Canada), and French speaking nations -- it just doesn't look right.

Not quite in the same vein, but instructive nonetheless, many years ago our US
born chairman insisted on branding a product with the prefix 'kwik', a
relatively common misspelling in the US, instead of 'quick'. The product
bombed, and market research suggested the brand simply looked wrong to the
target market. We rebranded, and as far as I know -- I've long since moved on
-- the product is still around and does reasonably well.

~~~
palish
Interesting. As an American, the British spelling "Colour" always seemed
classier to me than "Color".

So it's interesting to find an example of the "opposite": As a non-American,
"Color" is strange to you in the same way "Kuller" would be strange to you.

~~~
watmough
If you really think about this, you may recognize the genius of Jim Meddick
(of Robotman and Monty fame), in naming a compilation "Primary Crullers".

------
ChuckMcM
I agree with other commentators that given their initial raise, the company
has a number of 'chances' to find the right mix which connects with their user
base.

That being said, back when everyone was reading "Snow Crash" and trying to be
the guy/gal who created the metaverse, there was some good research into just
what sort of 'group event' you could reasonably hold in a network space.
(sadly they don't pop up easily on citeseer but they were in the late 90's
early 00's about network group meeting events and the people congregating via
digital networks).

The bottom line of the research was that it was _really_ hard to build a
workable mesh network protocol (basically which provided any to any
connectivity / traffic amongst a modest sized group) in the presence of any
traffic loss whatsoever.

One of the outcomes of that research was what most people think of as CDNs
which push audio/video content amongst a number of servers and try to
distribute the load of "Large" events. A more or less practical example was
the 40 user 'raid' that the MMORPG World of Warcraft started with, provided
co-ordinated events amongst 40 individual users located across the globe. It
had a hard time pulling it off but was successful. 100 or 200 users in the
same 'area' often killed the servers.

Color is shooting for 10's of thousands of people in the same space. This is
P2P "gone wild" and not a solved problem by any means.

So kudos for failing fast, now to see what happens next.

------
nhangen
As someone who's never been able to get the attention of TC, this quote
bothers me:

 _"The team here at TechCrunch will give Color all the mulligans it wants to
get things right. They can swing and miss all day and we’ll still be here in
the stands, rooting them on."_

~~~
trotsky
It seems to me this is a clear ploy: we'll speak nice of you if you start
giving us access. Has the staff of color shut out TC in favor of major media
outlets? Does that challenge the industry assumption that you have to be in TC
to get traction?

Certainly we all know of companies that Michael has invested in or the staff
otherwise favors that get no mention of blunders or a lack of traction
significantly beyond what color faces.

Or maybe they should have let Arrington throw some money in to keep him from
trashing them.

Techcrunch Editor Discloses Investments, Admits To Conflicts Of Interests:
[http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/04/like...](http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/04/like_it_or_lump.php)

------
DrStalker
Does Colour need a certain critical mass to even start to be useful? I tried
it in Sydney, at some very busy places around the CBD and I only ever saw one
other photo from someone else.

Of course, I could have been using the tool wrong because I really had no idea
which symbol did what, but seeing that one other pic suggested to me it was
working and getting nearby photos.

~~~
bane
I guess a different question is, can you define "useful"?

Outside of maybe seeing immediate photos from people closer to the front row
at a concert, I can't think of a use for color. But I could just be
unimaginative about this kind of thing.

------
fingerprinter
TBH, I would be surprised if Color didn't "succeed" in some way. They have
enough money to try at least 5-10 different ideas & approaches and that is an
incredible luxury. And I don't mean slight pivots, I mean complete departures
from what they are doing now.

Will they be successful? It seems obvious that they are fumbling around and
actively searching for a model. I'm going to wager that if they do "succeed"
some day it is because the VCs worked hard to find them an exit into some big
company.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
With that much money, they will likely have a huge burn rate and flame out
much more quickly that expected. I've seen first hand multiple times what too
much money can do to a startup. It's not pretty!

Personally, I'm expecting Color to have a similar fate to Cuil. I hope I'm
wrong, though, just because being a winning cynic isn't fun.

------
tehjones
From where I am sitting color seems like the idea of a computing scientist
that has gone out of hand. The premise would work brilliantly if EVERYBODY was
using color, but unfortunately they arent. Right now they seem to be facing
the problem faced by any social network start up. If you dont know anyone in
the network, where is the incentive to join?

------
tyng
It took me a while to realise the title of this article was about Color-the-
app. Seriously, the name itself raises an eyebrow.

------
staunch
I think the idea that a failed launch can kill you is (generally) bullshit.
Unless the company is _weak_ it isn't the end of the world.

If they make their product great and it resonates with users it will be
successful eventually, if they stick with it.

There are a billion people in their target market. Even if they spoiled their
rep (for now) with 10 million (unlikely) that leaves quite a few other
potential users.

Being cuil in Silicon Valley is not a prerequisite to success.

~~~
dkasper
Yes, but it's harder to find that second 10 million users.

------
wilschroter
If so many people who are willing to use the app are inherently confused by
the use case, isn't THAT the failure point?

I don't remember being confused why Friendster was useful when it ushered in
social networking. It worked because the use case was obvious.

------
daimyoyo
It was hilarious watching Bill Nguyen on This Week in Startups tripping over
himself apologizing about how badly his app sucked. I think the lesson here is
that you shouldn't put your app into the wild unless you're certain(and have
beta testers confirm) that it's ready for prime time.

------
ams6110
_I say to Color, “SWING for the fences!”_

No rookie player (i.e. startup in this analogy) begins by swinging for the
fences. Color are finding out that just putting the bat on the ball is a lot
harder than it looks.

------
urbanjunkie
I guess Michael Arrington _isn't_ an investor in Color.

~~~
ojbyrne
Not to mention he basically seems to be writing blog posts during NBA playoff
intermissions. Sports metaphors abound (and confound).

~~~
olalonde
More likely UFC 129 <http://www.ufc.com/event/UFC129> ;)

------
endlessvoid94
"How Many Mulligans"? What?!

This is HN. This is where we have thoughtful discussions on how to improve
ideas, projects, and companies. This isn't where we sit in our armchairs and
decide as users which companies are going to fail and why we've given up.

What the hell, people.

