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At least now we know why Color really got that funding (daringfireball.net)
403 points by ChrisArchitect on March 25, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 155 comments



Don't worry, if Apple acquires them (like they did their last company, Lala) then Gruber will suddenly realize how revolutionary the idea is.


Do you have a refutation for the articles's words? Or is this simply an Ad Hominem? Compare and contrast to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2370547, which is just as scornful but also logical.


I'm with you, but stand by my claim that if Adam Lisagor had shot an ad for Color, Gruber's tone would be entirely different.

Here's another post about a photo-taking application earlier this week:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/03/22/everyday


Interesting, however I would point out that Gruber isn't reviewing the app, he's reviewing the founder's quoted claim that the app is a data collection play.

Personally, I disagree with Gruber: Facebook and Foursquare seem to be evidence that people will gladly give up their personal data in exchange for a "social" experience. But whether Gruber is right or wrong is not the point I was responding to, it's whether Gruber would hypothetically like the app if it was hypothetically bought by Apple.

This is irrelevant to what he's saying now. Even if he does like everything Apple does and does hate everything Apple doesn't do, appealing to his bias is the textbook definition of an Ad Hominem:

  An ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem,
  is an attempt to link the validity of a premise
  to a characteristic or belief of the opponent
  advocating the premise.
If he's wrong, we can attack his argument directly. How can we have a meaningful discussion about what he might say if some hypothetical future acquisition takes place? Worse, what if he's right now and would be wrong if he did change his mind after some hypothetical future acquisition?

In that case, dismissing him because of his bias might rob us of a valuable insight.


flyt's comment is not an ad hominem argument, because flyt is not trying to link the validity of the premise (that Color's funding was the result of their data mining potential) to a characteristic of its advocate (Gruber's pattern of Apple apologetics).

In fact, the way I read flyt's comment is that flyt actually agrees with Gruber, but is predicting that if Apple were to have something to do with Color, Gruber's cynicism would disappear.

Unless I'm misunderstanding flyt, this was in no way an ad hominem argument.


Ah, these "that's not ad hominem" comments you read in every single thread that points out ad hominem get so tiresome.

It most certainly is ad hominem. The premise of Gruber's post is approximately that, based on the latest information we're learning about it, there's something distasteful about Color or its value proposition to consumers. The original commenter seeks to discredit Gruber's implied argument by suggesting he's an Apple apologist, that his industry analysis is not based on facts at hand but by inherent biases. This is right in the sweet spot of ad hominem. Just read the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on ad hominem to confirm.

Regardless, it's certainly poor form and disappointing to see so highly upvoted.


Except he's not trying to discredit Gruber. He's pointing out that Gruber is able to be unbiased because the product isn't owned by Apple.


Huh? So when the product is owned by Apple he is unbiased?


No. The opposite of this.


Converse


I love you guys.

(You really should do "Who's on first?" sometime. :-)


He already reviewed it, and panned it then as well.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/03/24/color


"Nice domain name, though."

I wonder how much that cost them...



I disagree. Everyday is a part-time collaboration by 4 people that hasn't taken on funding, let alone $41M worth. And Everyday has a business model that doesn't mine data about you: it's $1.99 on the app store.

So, I guess it's like Color in that it uses pictures, except that it's different in just about every other way.


Very cool app.


Besides the fact that those two apps involve the taking of photos, they couldn't be more different. I don't think Gruber's like of one and dislike of the other can be seen as any kind of hypocrisy.

I'm also curious what how his response (or others') would have been changed had Lisagor shot an ad for them. But, as a data point, Gruber hasn't linked to at least one of Lisagor's ads. (The 3D one for jawbone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exm981pbrJg)


flyt's comment is certainly an attack on Gruber, but I wouldn't call it an ad hominem argument since flyt isn't attempting to discredit Gruber's reasoning by proposing a flaw in Gruber's character.

In fact, I don't think flyt is claiming that this wasn't the reason for Color's funding. flyt seems to merely be noting that, while Gruber sounds cynical and disapproving in this post, Gruber would probably approve of and attempt to justify the product if Apple were to acquire Color.


That had occurred to me, and I was going to suggest that it is semantically equivalent to claiming that John's mother wears army boots. Possibly true, possibly false, but irrelevant and off-topic.

However, I assumed (possibly incorrectly) that somebody would suggest that insulting the author in a thread purportedly discussing the author's words is an indirect way of discrediting the words.

I could be wrong, in which case I would suggest that such a comment is not contributing to the discussion.


If a comment is not contributing to the discussion, then down-vote it. A non-contributing comment is not the same thing as an ad hominem argument. Also, an attack on someone's character is not the same as an ad hominem argument.


The entirety subthread about "is it ad hominem or not" is useless meta noise that has nothing at all to do with the main post. Folks, please just say no before creating such a subthread, or responding in one. The original very brief comment was related to the main topic and was a fine, if possibly cynical remark. It represented a view that had not been expressed. It was conversational in nature, such as someone might observe during any reasonable discussion of this topic. It did not need several pages of deconstruction. Comment deconstruction and analysis belongs in an academic literary journal, not here. Thanks.


The credibility of a source is relevant. If the National Enquirer posts commentary on a matter, you're likely to take it less seriously than commentary from The Economist.


Why? If they write something obviously false, then I can refute it directly.

The time I question someone's reputation is when they appeal to authority themselves. For example, if I were to write "I've been in business for twenty years, take it from me that where startups are concerned, _____," then it's perfectly appropriate to point out that I haven't worked in silicon valley.

After all, my reputation is part of my argument, so questioning it is questioning my argument. Other than that, if I say something about business, arguing that I boast of being a Socialist says nothing about whether my words about business are useful. If you "take them with a grain of salt," you are the one who may be missing out.

This principle is not new to HN. Paul Graham wrote about it explicitly in his essay "How to Disagree:"

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Have a look at what he has to say about DH0, Name calling, and DH1, Ad hominem. You may not like the National Enquirer, but if they were to write about a startup, it should be possible to disagree with their suppositions without resorting to questioning the piece solely because they published it.


Actually, I am just plain less likely to read it, but I agree with your premise.


Funny, I can't seem to find the article where I said much of anything about Lala, post- or pre-acquisition by Apple, let alone the one where I claimed they were "revolutionary".

Please let me know the URL for that piece.


Could you link to your HN profile from Daring Fireball (or something equivalent)? I'm having doubts about whether you're actually John Gruber or not, if only because you would have used 'gruber' instead of jgruber (gruber is still available from what I can see). Would be nice to have it cleared up once and for all.

And if you're not John Gruber of Daring Fireball, then please remove the lies on your profile page.


As of about 6:50 PM EDT, this ad hominem attack on the article's author has almost as many upvotes (56) as every other top-level comment on this thread combined (67).

Sad.


As of 6:05 PM Central time, at least three people have used the phrase "ad hominem" incorrectly. Unless flyt was attempting to discredit Gruber's premise (which I don't think is the case), the argument is not ad hominem.


Are you suggesting that disparaging the author without attempting to discredit their argument is somehow better? I ask because I'm really not understanding what drives your pedantry or the apparently resounding agreement with it that voting readers have expressed.

Frankly, the Hacker News I want to read is one where the top comment is not a personal attack, regardless of whether people agree on whether it qualifies as ad hominem argument.


100% agree with you.

An "irrelevant personal attack" and an argument that relies on one are equally undesirable to me.


I'm only suggesting that disparaging the author alone doesn't constitute an ad hominem argument.


It's a popular phrase around here. It seems like people can barely contain the urge to play the "ad hominem" card. It's regurgitated all the time on HN. Same with:

  -"Straw man"
  -"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
  -"A bad workman blames his tools" (this one is on the rise)
I'm sure there are many others I'm missing. Even HN has memes.


"The plural of anecdote is not data" is another.


- Dunning-Kreuger Effect


You are correct but it is still sad to see that this irrelevant attack is so popular.

How is this comment interesting? It’s not about what Gruber is discussing, it just attacks and doesn’t even provide evidence for its assumption.

Such comments are not uncommon and I hate them with a passion. A snide, short remark, picking up a popular sentiment without any attempt of providing evidence for the same (“The New York Times has a liberal bias anyway.” – “Fox News is filled with fascists!”) — that’s just spam as far as I’m concerned.

Whether or not services where the user is the product can be valuable for the same is a very interesting question and you could write 1,000 word essays about it — but instead this crap made it all the way to the top.


The article in question is a snide, short remark. I don't know why anyone would come to this thread expecting reasoned discourse.


I don’t think HN should aspire to have comments of merely equal quality to the source material.

Why exactly do you think that subpar articles must automatically lead to bad discussions? That’s far from a given for me. The topic – users as products – is certainly interesting and touches on a whole host of issues that are traditional HN lore, from Google’s business model to startup monetization.

As I said, eloquent 1,000 word essays that emphatically disagree with Gruber’s position are certainly possible. Instead there’s spam.


It all depends. Sometimes these attacks on the character or reputation of the argument are indirect ad hominem arguments. Consider a fictitious debate between a Christian and a Muslim politician about whether or not to strip Americans of even more civil liberties.

The Christian candidate listens to the Muslim candidate make a point, then says loudly and clearly, "Folks, he's a Muslim!"

He doesn't say "And therefore he's wrong," but nevertheless it is rhetorical device for discrediting his opponent and getting the audience to ignore his point.

Wikipedia calls this Ad hominem abuse:

  Ad hominem abuse (also called personal abuse or personal attacks)
  usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponent
  in order to invalidate his argument, but can also involve
  pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or
  actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument.

  This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and
  even true negative facts about the opponent's personal
  character have nothing to do with the logical merits of
  the opponent's arguments or assertions.
http://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ad_hominem


It sounds like you are suggesting that flyt thinks that Color's funding has nothing to do with the potential for user data mining, and thus disagrees with Gruber and much of the Hacker News community. I think you are wrong.


So does that mean that the comment has social proof and is thus more likely to be valuable? Discuss.


Useless and irrelevant comments such as this one, along with it's many replies, contribute to signal-to-noise degradation of the discussion section of many popular HN posts. Maybe collapsible comment threads would help to mitigate this.



I agree with you. Those comments thread should be collapsible. And we need a way to see only new comments.


I remember attending a Startup School talk wherein Max Levchin explained that Slide wasn't a "pimp my MySpace" company, but rather a data mining company using MySpace widgets as the trojan horse. So, Nguyen isn't the first serial entrepreneur to receive loads of funding based on his reputation and attempt to exploit the trend du jour to mine data from the masses.

We all saw how well that worked out for Slide. My guess is that Color will see a similar fate. It's unlikely you'll build a great social photo sharing application if that's not your primary focus.


I think Color was funded for a variety of reasons, but it has very little to do with product. It's unfortunate that Bill feels he needs to defend the startup at this stage on the merits of it's product or future product - it's not a battle he can win until he has the social proof that traction provides.

For now they have cash, a great network and PR buzz that can kickstart traction.

In terms of product development, it's unfortunate they've raised so much money so early in their lifecycle. A cash surplus can really muck up the natural evolution of a product. e.g. you hire too fast and and up with a staff of 100 people all trying to justify their existence by pulling, pushing and shoving the product. No matter how strong a leader you are, it's tough to control that situation.

My prediction, and I don't feel good saying this, is that Bill and his team are going to do a lot of innovation that won't evolve into a business but will provide much inspiration for other businesses that will succeed.


Max still made about $40M personally on Slide. The real loser in that acquisition is Google. I think the VC scene in the Silicon Valley is becoming more and more screwed up (becoming more resume/track record, rather than innovative product focused), and the Silicon Valley will pay dearly for this.


That's what happens in a hype-driven market - when startups aren't expected to make real money (eg Twitter's evaluations vs income) decisions are made based on hype, which is influenced by track record, celebrity status, media attention etc.

All publicity is good publicity for Color right now and following Slide's lead is exactly what it's meant to do.


I don't see how SV or innovation will suffer greatly. People who don't have the nice VC connections can bootstrap and make it to profitability.

The people who stand to lose are VCs and their accredited investors. Legitimate companies with actual revenues should be able to get funding even if the VC funds leave.

One downside is that VC money is determining where the software developers go, which could lead to suboptimal allocation of skilled labor. However, some of these heretofore unprofitable ventures provide real value to the public (ie Twitter).


Data mining at Slide was top tier but there was an unfortunate mis-timing with the economy tanking (read: advertisers had no money) ... and hence the eventual shift towards virtual goods.

I don't think many people understand how advertisers eat this stuff up. When they start throwing money around again (probably soon), you bet the big guys (like Color?) will repeat the benefits.


Just wait till the oil goes back to $150+/barrel- the value of data mining will diminish again rather soon.


Hm, what exactly do you think data mining is? How much money do you think Facebook gets out of data mining?


In all seriousness, I would love to know. (not the 1st Q but the warum's and wieviel's of data dollars)


Couldn't agree more. Also; people don't want to use the app whether it be because they dont want strangers seeing their pics (I know I dont) and that its yet another photo sharing tool


I think this is the natural reaction of the hacker news (intelligent and savvy) crowd, but I see more and more every day that the average human desperately wants to be seen by anyone. Hence the success of youtube, twitter and facebook.


Brings to mind a blog entry of Chris Dixon's back on 8/5/09: "Reading my friends’ tweets helps me keep connected with them, the same way bumping into them on the street and exchanging small talk does. The content isn’t as important as the connection shared and presence felt."


Is it a reaction to a form of mass social dislocation? Everyone finding acceptable ways to yell and scream for attention, not because they have something useful to share, but just because they are desperate to be part of the meta-conversation.


With that in mind, are we really advancing society with this?


Hardly. I imagine unnecessary corporate rules and other security rules being created from Color. Imagine: You are working in an office and all of the sudden someone is offended from the pictures on your phone. Or you are on a plane and suddenly become terrorized from the pics on the phone from the man sitting next to you. From a practical point of view, Color is not a viable app to advance society.


Interesting points and I think you are spot on with this assessment. I've not used Color, but been at an event where it was used. Frankly, what I saw was a mass of photos all of the same thing - various angles of the inside of a historic building. I'm not sure how it added to the event or anyone's enjoyment of it. I can see how Color could have some amazing applications, like forensic analysis of an event based on hundreds (if not thousands) of photos taken at and around the moment that something happened. Think of what would be possible if Color had existed and was in heavy use on 11/22/63.


Since most office workers spend the majority of their time behind a computer screen, it makes up for all the contact we lost Pre-Internet.


I think Slide was acquired more for the talent than for the product itself - although that's an expensive talent buy.

And who knows, maybe in some capacity it works out - I believe the Slide team at Google is responsible for the launch of Disco.


Although Gruber is summing it up based on a developer's words, they do state this ridiculous data collection in their privacy policy (which is an implied agreement, based on your downloading of the app).

http://color.com/privacy

--

We also collect pictures, videos, comments, and actions you take through the App (“Content”), and information on your location. When our App is active, your Device provides periodic updates to our server of your location, which allows us to show you fresh Content based upon where you are at that moment. We share your Content with others. Sharing Content publicly with others from different locations is what this App is about. If you find this objectionable, please consider not using our App or Site.


That seems like a remarkably clear and fair privacy policy.


Yes the privacy policy is at least clear about it.


How long before Color becomes Chat Roulette? What protections are children afforded where the content is not "personally identifiable?"

And how long after that before Apple drops Color from their App Store?


I've been wondering about that for a while. The application is vulnerable to GPS spoofing (you can get your phone to tell it that you are somewhere you aren't), and while all the stuff it does to identify location (amount of light, listening to sound) is nifty, it can surely be defeated. How long will it be until hardcore pornography fills the feed at some major event? Or spam images, asking the reader to visit a site?


There are some good PGP type filtersnyouncould do. The more pictures of yourself you take the more likely you are who you claim. You can't reuse an visual identity very well because you can't be in two places at once. If strangers are constantly taking pictures with you then that adds to the validity of your identity.

So GPS spoofing would allow you to flood some area with a feed but for how long, you need to fake so many things. And you won't get connected to someone unless they mutually take a photo.

It's very clever in it's ability to naturally prevent cheating. Which brings us back to why it's so creepy.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm too much of a futurist to not think the data it collects isn't gonna be freaking powerful/cool.


Why don't you try that last sentence again without so many negatives, and see if you don't like it less?


Ha, thanks for the tips.


I feel so prescient now: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2366765

Seriously, I think people are seriously overthinking the photo sharing aspect. That's just the first thing they could think of that seemed like it would have mass appeal, but I imagine the company has little to no interest in private photos or in tracking individual users.

Here's how I see the possible future applications. You go somewhere and use your phone en route. Your phone knows approximately where you are and have been recently with a fair degree of detail. Rather than uploading that information to a server and scaring people away from using it, it listens to a stream of numbers from a server, which represent various different location and/or environmental criteria. The phone matches these with what it knows about itself based on where you've taken it, as if it were playing bingo. Every so often it gets a good match, and then uses that as a hash to look up a particular commercial message - one that has a high probability of being relevant to the owner of the phone based on where they are, where they're going, or where they have an established trail.

So you're traveling up the escalator in a shopping mall, when suddenly your phone shrugs (tm). What is it? That obscure thing you like and searched for last week is in a store 2 minutes walk away. Hardly anyone buys those, so if you go there in the next hour they'll give you 20% off; otherwise it goes back to the wholesaler.



Not to bring pop culture to HN, but this "photo data mining" reminds me of the ultrasound/sonic contraption in "The Dark Knight" that collected visuals on everyone in the city.

What I find fascinating about Color, though, is that I can open the app in downtown Palo Alto and actually see photos of startups nearby, peoples' lunches, offices, whiteboards, window views, and so on. Mobile/GPS-based photography is an idea that has been tried in the past, but seemed to have never taken off due to lack of traction. Surely too early to tell, but perhaps the high publicity attracted here will actually make it possible for this one?


As a company owner I'd be afraid that people are taking pictures with product ideas and information on whiteboards which is leaking internal information and documentation...


That was exactly my first thought. I was just ready to go home when the $41MM! news made the rounds and decided to check out the app before the commute. When it asked me to take a profile picture I had trouble finding an angle that didn't include a shot or reflection of my whiteboard (among other things), so I took a picture of my nose.

If Color takes off, and is used carelessly, it could become the single greatest social engineering weapon ever made. Who needs to sneak into your competition's office when you can just get within 150 meters and fire up an app. I would expect more secure organizations to outright ban it.


There's another possibility: simply using Color becomes a out-and-out dick move, like smoking indoors. The investment turns to ash because the product is (rightly) viewed as toxic.

The thing about FB is that it was useful and nice. It brought a circle of people who you knew but had lost sight of back into the realm of visibility, which - as it turned out - was something a lot of people really liked. Only after it had reached critical mass did the privacy aspect start becoming a concern.

Color, on the other hand, doesn't seem to do anything truly new AND beneficial. At the same time, the privacy issue (read: creep factor) is immediately obvious. Also, unlike FB - which relied on Ivy league students to be early adopters - Color seems to be going after a very different group of people for initial validation. And those people are rapidly concluding that this thing is an odious turd of the very first order.


Wow. Is anyone still surprised that social networks do this? Really? "Oh! so that's what they are really doing?, Aha!' I would think that's has been established as the status quo for a awhile now.

a 42$ million investment, I would be curious about any thoughts on how a company would make a profit from that investment. Other than selling information about it's users.

I think the gotcha would be "Oh the company is NOT selling customer information!" So that's how they are doing it. This article seems like they just uncovered some new revelation.


Just what I've been saying...

And if the data mining stuff is good, they don't even need you to download their trojan horse. They can just license the tech to Facebook and leverage their installed base.

EDIT: Perhaps Twitter is the best fit as a licensee - huge installed base on smart phones, and apparently can't data mine their way out of a wet paper bag, if the #dickbar fiasco is any indication.


One shouldn't forget about exif data on images.


Are EXIF tags added by the iOS when taking a picture? Or by the app calling the camera API after the photo is taken? I would guess it's latter.


Yeah, EXIF tags have to be explicitly added to an image by the app (using CGImageDestinationSetProperties()), regardless of how a photo is taken.

As an aside, I'm kind of surprised that there's no easy way to add EXIF data with AssetsLibrary or UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(). I would have sworn that there was one before I went and looked just now.


What is interesting is, if a few person in the graph start identifying themselves on their profiles. Then there might be a way to identify the others in a picture based on his nearby graph, other attributes(like gender + common friends).

Others have already shown how easy is to de-anonymize a social graph from public datasets[couldn't find the relevant paper]


Relevant research is at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak09.pdf (warning: PDF).


UIImagePickerController, which is used to take photos, does not return EXIF data. Apparently, it is possible to hack around this limitation, but Apple doesn't take too kindly to this sort of behavior.


UIImagePickerController does indeed return EXIF data. In the delegate method:

  - (void)imagePickerController:(UIImagePickerController *)c
  didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo:(NSDictionary *)info
you can retrieve a metadata dictionary from the 'info' dictionary. One of the keys in that dictionary is "{Exif}" which points to another dictionary that has all the EXIF data.


Does it matter though? The iOS app already asks to get your location information. It's that same location info that would go into the putative EXIF tag, so Color already has the info. Or is there something else in EXIF that would be relevant in this case?


The user may have agreed to let the Camera app access their GPS data, but refused to let your app access their GPS data. For the case of Color, no it's not relevant. For the question posed by the (G?)GP, I think it is.


I was going to say also - THEY KNOW YOUR PHONE NUMBER.


Actually, at least on an iDevice with iOS 4, they don't have access to your phone number. Unless the user types it in (or selects themselves from the address book).

Seems like it's easier on Android, but I'm not certain, just googled a bit.


They removed it in 4. It was there before but it was the number from iTunes activation, which wasn't necessarily worth anything (or filled in). Apple wouldn't approve you if you touched it, either, and it was undocumented.

Device ID they don't seem to care about; I send it in my app's User-Agent and I've survived several approvals. That's uniquely identifiable, but at least you can't call the user. As you suggest, most apps pop up contacts and have you pick yourself, it seems.


Actually, I think it will be much worse than that. Think: location based advertising. In order to use color you have to allow GPS for the app and, optionally, push-notifications. A perfect combo for pushing ads when you're within X range, etc.

I sent a tweet to them yesterday, but got no response. https://twitter.com/#!/tenaciousJk/status/51033367050846208

edit: group response to the below

No geo-ad platform has this low barrier to entry with this high of an incentive. Simply snap a pic and it's recorded and you're "checked in" if you will. You're doing something you want to be doing: recording your event, people you're with, etc. With 4S and Gowalla you have to want to check-in. Checking in is the app - not recording your memory by way of a picture/video. Sharing pictures is the biggest social app on the web.


I live in a crowded city -- I would personally love an effective location-based advertising engine that would learn my preferences.

The only problem is, these people are doing it wrong. A location-based app that serves deals shouldn't collect data in indirect ways.


um foursquare already sort of does this, go to the places tab, and it shows you how many specials are nearby.


Presumably Color inc. are doing some visual processing to read brands from images too and to possibly establish demographics?


Facebook already do more than photo sharing. I don't personaly like using facebook, but at least with facebook i don't share my personal life with everyone. What's more personal than your pics? your face?


Is it not the case that you can already attach ads to an app that ties into geolocation?


What a lame commentary. He's surprised why? What about google search, gmail, facebook and twitter? When the "product" is free, YOU are the product.


Gruber's point is that the CEO should not have tried to justify the value of their product by pointing out the data mining aspect. It is not good PR.

(BTW, Gruber blogged the "you are the product" last Sept.) http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/11/reece-iad


"Gruber did it" is the new "Simpsons did it"?


How much time we need to understand, that the big business is surveillance of human resources (google, facebook). There always be a ton of cash for data mining and selling it to governments, political parties, advertising companies etc. If governments try to do it, its a privacy problem. But when corporations put a cool, color(ful), free app, you will give them your data, they can sell it. And its perfectly legal. Thats why they have all the money. But you are decision maker. And only by conscious action and wise choice you can make difference. Big elites(politicians,corporations,big investors) listen only in two cases, when they loose money, and when they are afraid for their life.


No one has mentioned their business model (page 3 of the interview). Basically they expect venues to pay for the ability to know the names of their frequent customers so that they could be greeted... but I thought they don't collect personal info.


And what color is bullshit?


I thought that was pretty much 4sq.


To actually get the data they are going to mine, people have to actually use the thing. This is where I think color will fail... plus they spell colour wrong! (sent from Canada)


shephard-mba13:~ shephard$ for x in color.com colour.com; do echo $x; dig +short $x; done

  color.com
  50.17.223.168
  50.17.223.164
  colour.com
  50.17.223.168
  50.17.223.164


Or even:

  ~$ for x in colo{,u}r.com; do echo $x; dig +short $x; done


or just:

    $ host color.com; host colour.com


freaking funny. I love this place...



I rewatched The Social Network. I just realized that Timberlake's final rant as Sean Parker in that film was essentially the premise of Color.com- to wit:

"The next transformative development, a picture-sharing application. A place where you view pictures that coincide with your social life. It is the true digitalization of real life. You don't just go to a party anymore. You go to a party with a digital camera, and then your friends relive the party online. And tagging."


Did he really mention tagging? Woot.


I think he meant tagging people's photos (with their names), not del.icio.us-style tagging.


Odious creep factor aside, they deserve credit for securing both color.com and colour.com.

It's just amazing what you can do with $41mm, right?


It's interesting that they don't have their company name anywhere on the page except in small text in the footer. Also, even on colour.com the page title is still 'Color'. If it were my site, I'd be redirecting colour.com to color.com. (And swimming in pools of money.)


The tech explains the funding, but I still question whether Color will be widely used. I'm thinking Segway: amazing technology that didn't translate into an experience people enjoyed / wanted enough for mass adoption. This is why Apple does so well: they get both the technology and the experience right.


Color is not the sonic scanning mobile device in Dark Knight, it was the multi-lens visual scanner Lucius Fox threatened to quit over and self-destructed when they found Joker.

Bruce Wayne is Nguyen and we are Lucius Fox, but in this case there is no Joker to catch.


Money is the joker in this case.


(from the linked article):

> Then it will select the best picture and put it to the top of the photo feeds of people most interested in that image (like fans at the ballpark)

Great idea, but I don't think I've ever seen a description be so hand-wavey. You might as well put "Then some magic happens" there. Some details on how this happens (face recognition? social voting? views?) would be nice.

edit: I guess I should RTFA. It's still really high level, but later in the article Nguyen explains that they use views to measure photo quality.


What kind of a shock. The color app is unsuable, the user experience is the worst i ever had with an app. That's beein said, if data mining is there "goal", then i suspect they fail because when your goal is expressed in this way not in a way that match "user's" goal then you're going to fail. Google never said: "Hey our project i about collecting as much informations on people as we can". There goal is to satisfy some needs of their users.

On the other hand i need to say i was shocked to read what Color was about because it was so close to my start-up gold "idea" (don't ask what? :-) ). But more the time pass more i feel their project is so far of what we'd be doing.

I whish they understand that they can't succeed in this way, they can collect user's data like all those social networks does, but in exchange they need to provide something in exchange.


It's interesting that in a different article, I think it's Sequoia that said something along the lines of "something as revolutionary as this comes around once a decade. It's the next Google".

Seems like the goal of color is to aggregate vast amounts of real world data, like the Google of physical life.


They really said that? That's just utterly delusional in a Wired on push as the future stylee.

Anyways, to get at that real world data they crave, they're gonna need tons of users, and if they ever get even one tenth of a percent of what Google has I'd be shocked.


The hyperbole around Color sorta reminds me of another revolutionary product from a decade ago:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001/12/03/here-it-is.htm


(The segway, for those that don't feel like clicking through.)


Segaway Tycoon dies driving of a cliff on his Segway: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315518/Segway-tycoo...


Not the actual inventor, but man who purchased Segway therefrom.


At least "ginger" had a well-defined and well-understood purpose and leveraged some of Kamen's groundbreaking gyro/wheel knowhow.


soon it will be all the rage among mall cops.


    they're gonna need tons of users
No they won't, they just need to find people with tons of users willing to license the tech (or buy them)


Endgame: Real life Control-F


If you ignore the photo-sharing capability for a moment, it sounds like they're trying to create a more accurate alternative to GPS. In the 1700s Britain awarded about £100,000 in "Longitude prize" money to people who contributed to the development of [accurate] longitude. I tried to figure out what that is in today's pounds and found a calculator that said it's £147,000,000.00 today. So if Color really can create an alternative to GPS for $41 million, it would be cheaper than what it cost to develop longitude :)

No idea if they can actually pull this off, but thought the Longitude Prize story is cool (thank you, "Stuff You Should Know" podcast, for mentioning it earlier this year).


There will always be people who will post pictures publicly at different places. (similar to Youtube) There will always be people who will check out who are the crowds in different places. (similar to Youtube) With almost every phone being equipped with camera in the future, there will be even more pictures than video stored in Youtube. They probably will let you find people who have similar interests in each location. When they have a huge stored pictures and people's location preferences, I am sure they'll have ways to generate revenues. If college kids love and often use this application, they should have a chance (I think). Otherwise, ...


I uninstalled it the moment I realized i can't remove my photo from the app. I guess it will be stored permanently public in Color.

(Yes, you can slide the photo left to remove it, but it'd still show up in my stream!)


It did eventually disappear from the stream for me, and for me, it look as though there was nobody else around to see it!


Hmmm, maybe the removed photo doesn't reflect in the stream real-time (but will eventually) ... i may give it another try.


They got the funding because the investors think there's a small but non-zero chance that Color will become "the next twitter/facebook". The ROI could be 100 fold.

This is almost the opposite strategy to Yuri Milner, who is spreading his bets out over many companies. However, this strategy is no less valid. I say almost because the investors can make many (tens of) bets this size and still succeed in making money.


Yes. It's possible that Color could see a 100x return. It's also possible Mitt Romney will be president of the US in 2016. I think the odds are about the same for both.

Yuri Milner's strategy makes far more sense. Where is the hedging of risk by putting $40 million in a single company that's still seed stage at best?


Your comment isn't helpful if you don't provide a value. I'm not interested enough in the politics of the American Republican party to gauge whether you think it is < or > 1%.

As for one strategy making more sense, you cannot simply assert that when you have no numbers to back that up.

You cannot hedge a single bet by definition. Clearly the hedging of risk takes place in the other investments of the companies Bain Capital, Sequoia, and Silicon Valley Bank.

I have no inside knowledge of what Color is doing, nor do I think it's particularly likely that they'll succeed in becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry. But it doesn't have to be likely, when your ROI is potentially so high.


> As for one strategy making more sense, you cannot simply assert that when you have no numbers to back that up.

I can't give numbers, because they are simply impossible to quantify at this stage. (Note I said 2016, which is about the same time it'd take for Color to ramp up to its full potential.) My point is, Color is a long shot.

> nor do I think it's particularly likely that they'll succeed in becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry. But it doesn't have to be likely, when your ROI is potentially so high.

"potential" is the weasel word here. You can't possibly begin to anticipate ROI numbers for a particular investment at the stage Color is in. And you most certainly don't pump $40 million in a company if you think it's unlikely they'll succeed in becoming a multi-billion dollar industry.

This is all just a bit WTF-ish.


in the bubble years of the late 90's there was a startup that received $500 million in seed funding. I only bring them up because even with all the discussion around color I haven't seen them referenced (there might be others like them as well, I just don't remember any).

In similarity to color, their initial valuation and largess of funding was due to the history of their founders, and the perceived "hotness" of their target market.

Still around, but have never managed to do much of anything.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=zhne&ql=1


Intrade currently places Mitt Romney to be President in 2012 at 11.6%. I would think that he'd have a better shot in 2016. Do you think that Color has about a 10% shot at returning 100 fold?


Considering Twitter isn't turning a profit yet, I'm not so sure that "the next Twitter" is such a great thing to invest in.


there is a market for selling Twitter stock at $5B+ today. You would be crazy to turn down investing in a seed round of twitter on the principal that it isn't making money.

given the choice of being the idiot buying twitter at $5M or $5B, ill take $5M please


relax, it's just so they can send Groupon-style offers to people more likely to want them (Groupon would be great... if I ever actually wanted spa treatment, highlights, or weekend breaks)

on the other hand, suprised I haven't seen the obvious 'paedo/stalker threat' brought up yet. it's not data mining you'd need to worry about, it's individual predatory users


There's already relevant laws about such things. If I had to guess Color will not be offered for minors to use right away, precisely because of those laws. (At least, that's not something I'd implement before shipping out the MVP.) And when it is, there will be controls for this sort of thing that have been gone over with a fine-tooth comb by some expensive lawyers.

I understand what you're getting at, but I would submit this isn't the secret thing that only a few people can see that will sink the product, it's a pretty blindingly obvious thing that everybody including the Color team plainly sees. If they do ship something that makes the "paedo/stalker threat" easy to implement they'll deserve the resulting PR conflagration.


not to mention the feds or local cops pay for the same access they'd give an advertiser to fish for underage drinkers, or protesters.


How does one profit off of this data. Are there agencies which sell it, or is it marketed to companies in some sort of package?


I was wondering why it received such a huge investment.

That`s brilliant :) Great post john.


color & image recognition = decentralized police state


Everyone else is big brother. Which is how it has always been, actually.


I think if nothing else this is proof that if you have a clear way to generate value (evil or not), there is large investment to be had for tech start-ups.


how exactly will they be able to get trademark exclusivity on this name ? isn't this much more common than windows ever was ?


Apparently it's already trademarked--they have the TM right next to the name when you search it in the app store. I am really surprised by this...


"TM" means nothing in the U.S - anyone can slap "TM" on any product and claim a "common law" trademark, and it'll be up to them to defend against complaints and suits.

A "circle R", on the other hand, means that you have a federally-registered trademark. Which, after a bit of research at USPTO.gov, it appears they have (no surprise):

Word Mark COLOR, Goods and Services, IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer application software for social networking services; computer application software to facilitate social networking services by use of camera firmware in mobile devices; computer application software for sending, receiving, storing and organizing audiovisual, videographic and written data by use of camera firmware in mobile devices; computer application software to facilitate social networking services by use of location based data

IC 045. US 100 101. G & S: online social networking services; providing a web site to facilitate social networking services by use of camera firmware and geolocation software in the mobile devices of others

Serial Number 85222392, Filing Date January 20, 2011, Owner (APPLICANT) Jackson Labs, Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 201 Hamilton Avenue Palo Alto CALIFORNIA 94301, Attorney of Record Julia Spoor Gard

There are 3 other live trademarks for "Color," in the categories of Hair Color, printed goods, and plastic display racks.


On March 4, they also registered "MULTI-LENS", Goods and Services, IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer application software for social networking services; computer application software to facilitate social networking services and access to news and media outlets by use of camera firmware in mobile devices; computer application software for sending, receiving, storing and organizing audiovisual, videographic and written data by use of camera firmware in mobile devices; computer application software to facilitate social networking services by use of location based data.

IC 045. US 100 101. G & S: online social networking services; providing a web site to facilitate social networking services by use of camera firmware and geolocation software in the mobile devices of others.

That's it for their trademarks, at least under the company name Jackson Labs, Inc. Which leads me to believe that's the only product they've currently got cooking.


Not to mention that most 'mobile' photos are 'geotagged' with the GPS coordinates.

I think this 'data mining' revelation could just well be the 'death knell' ?


"or filenames, meta-data, facial recognition dataming data, geo-data etc'

Yeah there sure is nothing there that 'marketers' could use right?




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