www.color.com was released yesterday to great fan-fare: primarily thanks to the news they had secured 41 million dollars in funding (not a typo) for an app that let's you take and share photos with other poeple (a typo) in the nearby area.
The idea is, you're at a party and take a photo - and everyone there "gets it" - so it's like a photo album of the event without having to do any manual sharing or organising.
I like the concept, but mostly because I thought of it. Ok, no, I didn't think of it: but some time ago I spent a bit of effort trying to convince some fellow nerds to implement something similar. Sure, it was focused on chat instead of photos - but had a photo-sharing aspect. Like a geo-located chat room: a real life Habbo where you could extend or shrink the circle you were interested in, "elastically".
Now, this post is not about pulling a "those guys stole my idea!" line... But the timing of Color made me giggle: the day before it was released I posted this query to Hacker News:
Who executed an idea you had years ago?
Who has an old notebook filled with detailed scribblings about a "short-message sharing service", or a "location-based check-in site" that you sketched out then left to gather dust? Was your idea better in any way?
I was hoping to hear a bunch of sob stories of forgotten ideas transformed into piles of gold. Little did I know, the next day I'd have my very own! I guess this means I better get cracking on my other idea - record everything you ever do ever and send it to random people, but not to your friends. I call it your "inverse social graph" and am looking for seed funding:
5 Comments
Did you think of it prior to June 2007?
http://scripting.com/stories/2011/03/24/heresTheSocialCamera.html
Nope! But that means you had a lot longer to do something about it ;) And it certainly does prove that the value of an idea is exactly $0!
The Skyrock Spot iPhone app features a local chat. You can also write something, and everybody with the app and within a certain distance will get your message as a push notification. And the app also let you share pictures and videos, attached to any location.
Unfortunately, the service bombed and will be abandoned in a couple days.
I like to call them my “Unreleased Pub-lications” considering where most of them originate.
Also, I like the inverse social graph… you’ll have to be quick though, I heard of something very similar called twitta or something…
@bunsenhoneydew: Speaking for pub-lications – I’m still waiting for that iPhone app, you know! Perfect time to get it together, and get 41 million bucks!