Last week a new mobile phone application called Color was announced. Because it raised $41 million it generated a lot of claims that we are in a tech bubble.
Regardless of the value of the app, there are plenty of innovative ideas.
No Passwords Needed
Users don’t have to login with a password- in a time where almost everything one does online has an associated password you must remember, this is kind of refreshing.
Serendipity
Also, photos are pulled from the people closest to you. This builds more space for serendipity. Recommendation systems help psilo individuals in a social system, Color helps foster random interactions.
Living Business Card
Color will be used as a ‘living’ business card. I can take pictures of the art shows I see around Boston, and now people around me with the app will know that I participate in the Boston arts community. I would not mind people approaching me and asking me about one of the shows, it could help build the art community. Or say I pull up my phone and see photos of a circuit bent casio. (Seems kind of unlikely, but by MIT and in Somerville, it’ll happen), I’m sure whoever it is who posted those photos wouldn’t mind talking about their creations. People already consider their public persona, and if they choose, this could be another media outlet.
The Elastic Social Graph (The coolest part)
In a ReadWriteWeb article, the founder describes the real value of the app is not in photo sharing, but in data mining.
According to Nguyen, Color is built on some serious technology. The company has six patents pending and sees itself as “much more of a research company and a data mining company than a photo sharing site.”
All of this data is used to create an ‘elastic social graph’. The application knows who you have spent time with, and can reconstruct a dynamic social network. All popular social network sites now rely on heavy curation on your part. Color, instead, generates your social network.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Sandy Pentland’s research in constructing social networks using mobile phone data. The core ideas are the same. Your mobile phone use can be captured and analyzed to understand your behavior. This is where Color will monetize its free app, through advertising. Color also includes the ability to determine your location with a high level of accuracy, without using GPS, and that sort of information can be valuable.
For me, the elastic graph is the coolest part of the application. I’m not as into the idea of such a tool being used to centralize your data (including hi-res location data) to be sold. Instead, I wonder about using this innovation in other sorts of applications. Why not allow everyone to create a personal RSS, be it photos, movies, music, blogs, which can be deployed on the elastic social graph?
Now if I were on the bus, or in a cafe, I could see what sorts of things people around me were writing about, or making. If I meet you at a cafe or mixer, no need to jot down that website, it’ll be in my feed since we’re in front of each other.
