How Color is Being Used

Yesterday we compared the recent launch of new photo and video sharing app Color to the arrival of Twitter five years ago. Like Twitter, Color is an innovative app that has intrigued early adopters and has the potential to catch on in a big way. It’s also popularizing a new buzzword: proximity. Yesterday we looked at an early use case for Color: photo sharing at the premiere of a Hollywood movie. However, it wasn’t clear what value Color users at that event got from the app. So we asked the company for more information about the user experience so far and to give us more examples of how Color is being used.

In this post we explore some of those other examples of Color usage, including a concert and a BBQ. Also we talk to Color’s Chief Product Officer DJ Patil and ask him to explain more about the product vision.

Sponsor

Prior to joining Color’s founding team, DJ Patil was LinkedIn’s Chief Scientist. Via Patil’s LinkedIn profile, we see just how ambitious the Color team is about its product: "We’re out to change the world with how people interact and share experience through their mobile devices."

Color is a smartphone app that enables you to share photos and videos with a group of people at the same location as you. Patil told us that there have been a "wide array of use cases" for Color so far. They range from large gatherings (movie premieres, tech conferences, music concerts) to smaller groups (BBQs, "journalistic events" like the scene of a car fire, cooking groups).

Patil also emphasized that the company is still exploring use cases and they don’t want to "impose our projection of how to use the app” on people.

What Happens to the Content?

There has been confusion about where the content generated by Color goes and how is it shared. Are the photos taken using Color archived? Patil explained that if you participate in a Color group, that content is not only shared in real-time with others in proximity to you, it also appears in the ‘History’ section of the app as an album. You can share albums, photos and videos using Twitter, Facebook, email or SMS.

So far, Color has no search or archiving mechanism on its website. So the only way that people who weren’t at an event are likely to see albums is if they’re been shared via the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

Use Cases So Far

So how has Color been used so far? One example is a recent concert at Madison Square Garden by LCD Soundsystem, a popular electronics band. Here is the archived album for that show.

There were 82 photos uploaded by 26 contributors at the LCD Soundsystem show. Here’s an example of how that content was shared by the Twitter user @tewks.

Another point worth mentioning is that conversation can happen around an album. Here’s an example from ReadWriteWeb’s own Tyler Gillies, who used Color at two recent events in Portland: PDX 11 Civic Hackathon
and PDX Open Source GIS.

In yesterday’s post, several commenters and tweeters claimed that Color was only useful for large events – therefore they doubted that Color would be used as regularly as Twitter. The following example may counter that view. This is from a BBQ, with only 3 photo contributors. This album also includes one video.

Another example that Patil mentioned, where a smaller gathering of people was able to create a useful Color album, was at the scene of a car fire. Patil said that two people took photos from intersections and third person from a balcony.

Other examples that Color provided us were albums from the Where 2.0 conference and a block party in Kentucky.

These early use cases show the potential of Color to share experiences with people near you, using smartphones. Of course it remains to be seen whether this activity becomes widespread, but the early examples at least show that it can be used across a wide range of daily activities.

Let us know if these use cases have changed your mind about Color’s potential, or if you still think it just won’t fly.

Discuss