#color.com

[albertqian]

2011 Social Recap - #4: Social Media's Public Spotlight

As we enter into the final month of 2011, we begin to look back on the year and everything that happened. Like 2010, we’ll look at the social phenomenons that captivated the minds, spirits and interests of people this year, the trends that mattered and why they were impacting on the landscape of social media. Fourth on the list today is social media companies going public, from Groupon to LinkedIn and Zynga.

While 2011 was a recession for most, social media shone. The year saw the introduction of many companies such as Groupon, above as well as career-social networking site LinkedIn make their splashes into the public market. As this week winds down, the world will also see social networking site Zynga, the maker of addicting (and annoying) games such as Farmville, Cityville, Fishville and Mafia Wars. As we gear up for 2012, hot rumors about Facebook going public are swirling, and the 800 million user social network plans to go public in probably one of the largest IPOs that Silicon Valley has ever seen, rivaling that of even Google. 

The success of these companies is no doubt, to be lauded. However as the market for social products heats up, so does the market for rumors about a bubble and accusations of an industry propped up by hype. Nowhere was this clearer in March when Color.com, a photo-sharing application similar to Instagram received $40 million dollars in funding only see itself shut its doors several months later. Because humans are inherently social and always looking to fit in, social media will seemingly always have a public spotlight and be a necessary product in the first place - or so we think. 

Nonetheless, 2011 has shown that social media is an advancing and progressing industry. With a few companies going public, this industry certainly told the world it was staying and far from going anywhere. Momentum seems fresh for an even bigger splash by Facebook in 2012, as well as the hopeful emergence of more companies that can possibly go public and be invested upon. 

What did you think of companies going public this year in the realm of social media? Did you invest? Let me know in the comments below or send me a tweet @albertqian. 

Come back to this list after every post to see the top-10 list for the end of the year!  10. MySpace Rebrands, Sells 9.   Memes Go Viral 8.   Social CRM Evolves 7.   Everyone Has Klout 6.   Google Plus Launches 5.   Mobile Explosion 4.   Social Media's Public Spotlight 

[userexperiencehub-blog]

Reading these kind of articles makes me cringe a little. Well, actually a lot. Millions of dollars are being thrown at these start-ups to create the new next "thing", but none of these companies seem to understand who their user is, and how the user will want to use their product.

Face it, everything has been created at this point. What start-ups should do now is to take their idea, do a competitive analysis, find what doesn't work and what does work, what they can do in order to improve what it out there. And then run usability testing, or hell, any kind of testing asking the people that'll use the product if it's what they would want. Oh, and from the following quote and many like it,

"Just tried Color. Yet another photo-sharing app with a terrible first-run user experience. Everything is blank with no labels. Great."

For Color.com

Plenty of quotes like that one gives me the strangest feeling they didn't create prototypes and have people run through the prototypes with them to make sure people will know how to use the product. Never rely on people having to watch training videos to use your product successfully.

I think the idea for Color is a good idea. I'm not sure it's a good idea for mobile devices. iPad possibly. You need more screen space for the layout of the application to register to the user on how it should be used. The UI appears to be cluttered. And do people really want this? It seems that color banked on people wanting to use their product because of the name (which tells me it's a paint program, or for visual artists, and not photography) since they did spend $350k on the domain rights to color.com alone. Ouch!

At least this article in the NY Times will give them some advertising.

[segfaults]

untitled by adewale_oshineye on Flickr.

Color on iPhone. Version 1

[venturelevel]

Why Color's $41MM funding isn't crazy.

You may or may not have heard of Color, the photo sharing app based upon location. Either way, it has received $41 Million in venture capital funding and there was a lot of stir in the media saying that it was too much and absurd.

The firm that took the funding to this level was Sequoia Capital, which put $25MM in the company after they met with the founders for 45 minutes. If this bet turns out to be a winner, it will be huge for Sequoia, the downside- they lose $25MM. Significant? The probably lost more in SearchMe.

If you look at things in terms of how investors looked at it, you might be able to now justify the $41MM funding as well. $41MM now means Color might not need to raise money for the next 7 years, or ever. This leads the team to focus on building a rockstar product, and nothing else. No hesitation that money will run out, no worries about raising another round, or two. Just straight focus to the finish line- or at least the ability to focus until it goes "huge" like Twitter did in 2009. Then they might raise another couple hundred million, if needed.

Color spent about $500,000 on buying the domain color.com and colour.com, so they aren't really wasting the cash, instead investing it in good branding.

Color isn't an app that I would use. I'm not into sharing my pictures publicly at an event, frankly, I'd like to interact with the people around me at any given event, where I'd be inclined to taking pictures. However, just because I wouldn't use it, doesn't mean the "masses" won't. In fact, I think this could turn into a MySpace type company- in terms of growth. Remember when youngsters flocked to MySpace? It was more of a personality social network, letting you put up music that you like and change the background of your profile, etc. Then people connected with others who liked similar things and had similar interests. Color has the potential to go huge, if the youngsters find it worthwhile. Imagine birthday parties, high school sports events, and concerts.

I don't think that people's grandparents or even parents will be on this type of service since it is a very public form of sharing. It feels like more people want private sharing abilities with their friends and family these days, especially with all the social movements going on throughout the internet.

In the end, time will tell if this company will be successful, but it's hard to say that it will fail just because some tech journalists think so. I personally think Robert Scoble's rant was a little overboard, but I agree with his point about the app launching at SXSW, it would have been a huge leap towards success, since people at SXSW are there to discover new happenings in tech, and it would be a perfect environment for this particular app to give a user experience for the first time.

[dmitriiro-blog]

Color also compresses the time experience of social media. The act of sharing on Facebook, blogs, Tumblr or Twitter is still a discrete act. Step 1: Stuff happens to you. Step 2: You post about it and it becomes “what you think” about that which happened. Step 3: You check back to see the reaction. These steps could be separated by days or hours. Color connects in real-time and replaces objectivity with a tapestry. It’s Rashomon in real-time.

«Color, A Twitter For Photo And Video, Launches With $41 Million» by Bruce Upbin

[timothyturner-blog]

Color Social Network

Read a bit about the new Color Social Network - an interesting concept but the privacy concerns really get me worried. It seems before we know it our whole lives will just be on display for anybody to see - this coupled with my last post about Google working on locally targeted ads showing up on your smart phone...what a world huh?

Amplify’d from hubpages.com

Color Social Network: A Photo social network that's Post-PC

Color Social Network $41 Million in new funding!

Color.com really made a grand entrance today (3/24/2011). Not only did they just release their app live on Android and Apple iOS yesterday, but today they secured a staggering $41 Million dollar check from Sequoia Capital, in collaboration with Bain Capital and Silicon Valley Bank.

You think you have never head of Sequoia Capital right? Maybe you forgot about another start-up they invested in. Google. And guess what? They invested LESS in that venture than in Color.

So why all the hype? Color CEO Bill Nguyen has a good track record. He co-founded Lala, a cloud-based music service to Apple for $80 Million in 2009.

His vision: To create a social network that is post-PC. It's clear that Color (and their investors) believe in the future of the smart phone. This social network does not exist on a PC - in fact the whole idea only works with a portable device.

The basic idea revolves around sharing photos and videos based off user proximity, calculated by GPS. Users are then connected automatically through Bluetooth. This is a novel concept, but it certainly edges up against that fine line between public and private. It certainly gets my privacy warning signals going.

See more at hubpages.com

 See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fiRzi2

[michaelsalafia]

Color (Mobile Photo App): Super Social or Super Stalker?

via techcrunch.com

I love the concept, but at first I was concerned about the lack of privacy. The photo stream seems to be totally public... but if you think about it, that's what makes this app cool. If I'm concerned then I shouldn't use it to take photos I don't want to share publicly. In theory, this could literally be used to see the world around you through other peoples lenses and share your perspective with the world. Wiki meets location based micro-photo blogging.

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