

Why Color is overrated - philipDS
http://bogdanbocse.com/2011/05/why-color-com-is-overrated/

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swombat
First of all, there's no infringement of _privacy_ if someone takes a picture
of you in a public place. If you didn't want anyone to know about it, you
shouldn't have gone to a public fricken bar with your adulterous date. If
you're that guy who gets caught, sucks to be you. Don't cheat on your wife
next time - or if you do, do it in private. What if it was one of your wife's
friends who spotted you? Would you sue her? Big fat chance.

Secondly, that's not a one in a million chance. Unless his wife is a god damn
social media photo site addict, it's more like a zero chance. Why would she
stumble on that picture, ever? Unless, perhaps, she goes to the same bar and
looks through the hundreds of pictures taken there. But now you're not talking
random chance, you're talking determined digging (or complete and utter
stupidity on the part of the cheating husband).

Thirdly, I hardly know anyone who's been talking about color.com anyway.
That's probably the biggest problem they have, rather than the rare occasion
when someone may be caught out in the background of a photo.

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raganwald
Couldn't I could make the same argument about flickr.com? I take a picture. I
call it "drinks after a bike ride." I tag it with "Pina Colada Bar." I make it
public. How long before Mrs. James sees the picture? One in a million shot,
right?

What privacy problem does color.com have that doesn't apply to flickr.com?

~~~
Terretta
Hs position is that Color's value proposition kicks in when everyone's taking
pictures all the time, blanketing every venue with visual documentation --
more photos, not better photos.

Flickr's value proposition is interestingness, not total coverage. Further,
Flickr has three privacy layers, resulting in most night-on-the-town scenarios
being Friends-only.

He made this point with his odds argument. Odds on Flickr might be one in a
million, but Color wants users to take a million photos, making the odds one
in one.

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wattsbaat
As a side note, this type of documentation of the physical world should get
interesting when paired with projects like Microsoft Photosynth. (I'm sure
there are other similar projects.)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16frKJLVi0> Something along these lines will
make Google Streetview look quaint in a few years. (Although Google will
probably be involved in mapping the world in 3D as well.)

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shssince1985
It is overrated, because we keep posting about it, on this site and
discussions.

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bane
Considering that I've never once seen something nice said about Color,
overrated is hardly the word I'd use...unless we should all just start
relentlessly hating on it.

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peterzakin
The privacy problem is not going to be what kills Color. Having a privacy
problem to solve likely presupposes that they've been successful.

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jchonphoenix
Um... If Color is overrated, does that mean it deserves negative points?

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georgieporgie
If the risk hinges on millions of pictures flooding in, then James isn't
really at any elevated risk since he's in a handful of said millions of
pictures.

The only way Color makes things worse for James is if his wife knew he was at
said bar on a _previous_ night (i.e. she can't just show up in person) and
sifts through those images. Or if Color employs amazing facial recognition and
data aggregation to provide his wife a constant stream of James pictures.

I thought this was going to be about Hot Young Things inadvertently sharing
nip slips with nearby Creepy Old Guys.

