by @CodyBrown
I really wanted to hate Color. I really did. A pre-launch startup raising 41 million dollars for a consumer web iPhone picture app (not a satellite manufacturer) makes me want to vomit. But after a night of using Color—I’m intrigued. In the context of them raising 41 million dollars, Color is one of the most ingenious and ambitious iPhone apps I’ve seen in a long time. There’s a lot I could go into and I lot I’m waiting to see but I want to talk about one use case.
I’ve been living in a Bushwick, Brooklyn apartment building for about 6 months and my contact with almost all of my neighbors has been essentially a head nod now and then when we’re walking up the staircase. I opened up ‘Color’ late tonight after already playing on it with my roommates and I notice that there are other pictures there. At first I thought, oh funny, my roommates are already using it then I realize that it’s actually my neighbor posting a picture. This is hilarious because a.) I didn’t think any of my neighbors in Bushwick read TechCrunch b.) this is a weird chance to say hello to someone nearby who I’ve always meant to be more friendly too (everyone wants to be on good terms with their neighbors). So I did. This is what it looked like:
So that was awesome. This dinky little app effectively brokered an introduction that was 6 months in the making. And more so, I realized that because all of the pictures are public, my neighbor was able to see this:
He gets a very weird peek into our apartment and what we’re like. This is creepy and could actually lend itself to some really fucked up situations but it’s also kind of amazing. There’s a lot of ways this could go wrong and there is a lot of awkwardness in the fundamentals of their product but this applied to a global scale is fascinating. I’d like to know a lot more about their leadership and the vision for the platform.
