Thursday, March 24, 2011

Color’s Ambitious Photo App Seeks to Reinvent Mobile Social Networking


Color Demo from Color Labs, Inc. on Vimeo.
Say hello to Color, a new mobile photo-sharing application with a star-studded list of entrepreneurs and an eye-popping $41 million in funding. Its goal is nothing less than to become the ultimate local discovery tool.

The app, which made its debut just a few hours ago on iPhone (and very soon on Android), is best described as public photo and video-sharing app for groups. Yet it doesn’t have the typical friending or following that you’ll find on Facebook, Twitter, Path or Instagram. Instead, Color chooses which pictures you see based on your location and how often you’re sharing photos with someone else. Every photo and video is public, not only to the people you consider your friends, but to any stranger within your proximity.
When you launch Color, the app delivers a stream of content from anybody within 100 feet of your location, as well as anybody within your “elastic network.” In Color, you don’t choose your network; instead, the app determines your social network by figuring out who you’re hanging out with on a regular basis. Every time two friends use the app near each other, Color’s algorithms detect it and use it to essentially rank your friendship. You can also curate your elastic network through actions such as asking the app to “Show More” of a particular friend or liking/commenting on a friend’s picture.
Keeping your elastic network takes work, though; if you don’t see a friend for a while, his or her pictures start to lose their color until that person eventually disappears from your network.
The result is that whenever you fire up the app, you can see what pictures are being taken around you, as well as the pictures friends in your elastic network are taking. Not only that, but the app will show you the pictures being taken by others within 100 feet of your friends. The app even has the ability to pull pictures that your friends took in the past, so long as you’re standing in the same location in which the pictures were taken. Imagine visiting the Statue of Liberty and then being able to magically see your best friend’s pictures from a different trip three year ago.
It’s the ultimate voyeur app for those who simply want to know what’s happening with their close friends or that cute neighbor that just happens to live next door.

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