Updated.Color Labs, the photo sharing startup which became well-known for securing a whopping $41 million in venture capital but has since had a bumpy road with lagging user numbers and turmoil at the executive levels, is not shutting down operations, contrary to a report first published by VentureBeat that is circulating today. → Read More
Here’s a neat, well-deserved win for a startup company: Paper, the critically acclaimed drawing application for iPad is now being featured by Apple on iPad demo units in its retail stores, and now has over 3.3 million downloads, with 25 million pages of drawings created by users. The time spent in-app creating Color journals adds up to almost 200 years in total. → Read More
After a disastrous launch and a not-so stellar pivot, Color may finally have found its stride and a rather large core user base. Today, Color and Verizon Wireless have entered a three year deal to bring live streaming video and audio to its fleet of 4G LTE smartphones, including all compatible Android devices and even the iPhone. → Read More
Color.
That one word is enough to elicit a remarkably strong response from anyone involved in tech startups — and oftentimes that response consists of a lot of derision and talk of a bubble.
The startup that famously raised $41 million only to see its first app promptly flop has been almost completely silent for the last six months, heads down on a project that was codenamed Blue, which… → Read More
With Sequoia’s Doug Leone talking up Color Labs’ next pivot at TechCrunch Disrupt, and in-the-wild signs of a Color Labs Facebook app called Blue already beginning to appear, it seems like many are rapt in anticipation of what the future holds for the storied photo-sharing app.
Well, according to one Harvard student tipster, the company has been gearing up for a product launch at f8 by… → Read More
It’s no secret that there’s been a major amount of controversy surrounding Color, the photo sharing app that launched earlier this year with $41 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank (Sequoia apparently put $25 million in). Color’s debut was one of the most-hyped launches the tech world has seen over the past year, and since then the company has been… → Read More
Sometimes the need to test outweighs the need for total secrecy. I’m going to assume Color CEO Bill Nguyen shares that belief. The past two days his Facebook stream has been filled with some seemingly bland pictures. But they’re not bland — they’re test pictures. And they’re sent from a new app called “Blue”.
I don’t know much about the app itself, but I was able to dig up a little bit of… → Read More
“I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed.”
I’m reminded of Daniel Plainview’s admission in There Will Be Blood when thinking about Google.
While the company is still largely beloved by the public, sentiment seems to have turned against them amongst their peers, and even amongst many of the startups around Silicon Valley. While these tensions have been building for months… → Read More
Something of a black comedy involving white hot startup Color and still-green-behind-the-ears Instacolor.
Red in the face, the developer behind the latter app, which combines the key functions of Instagram and Color, was forced to change its name to Instalook after the Color folks developed a gray mood about the Instacolor name.
Color’s lawyers earlier this week sent a cease & desist to… → Read More
If that headline looks familiar to you, you’re probably remembering our story about Google offering to buy Path for $100+ million from earlier this year. Path turned that deal down.
About the same time, multiple sources have confirmed, Google was also making a run for Color, the mobile social network founded by Bill Nguyen. This was well before Color launched, and Google was looking at the… → Read More
If photo sharing apps Instagram and Color would mate and have a baby, it would likely look something like the Instacolor app made by tinkerer Rakshith Krishnappa.
Basically, the app aims to help Instragram users discover other users in their neighborhood, and lets you view photos posted by people around you in real time.
The app can be downloaded from the App Store now and costs $0.99. → Read More
Ever since Color launched its photo sharing app, the $41 million startup has been having a rough time. John Biggs and I reviewed it on Fly or Die back in March, when CEO Bill Nguyen joined us to defend the app ( you can watch that episode below, we both gave it a “die”). The company continues to struggle, so we decided to revisit our assessment in the new episode above.
Things don’t seem to be… → Read More
Come inside, take off your coat
I’ll make you feel at home
Now let’s pour a glass of wine
‘Cause now we’re all alone.
The opening lines of Color Me Badd’s seminal “I Wanna Sex You Up” sort of perfectly encapsulates Color — the company/photo-sharing app, not the band. After one of the most-hyped launches in recent memory, it was supposed to be the app that changed proximity-based sharing. → Read More
Well who isn’t building a photo sharing app these days? At this point I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Google came out with its elaborately named attempt like tomorrow.
But seriously, with such a glut in the mobile photo sharing market, it’s pretty hard to choose a vehicle with which to share your precious terrible photos. Never fear dear readers! Internet humormonger Sean Percival and I have… → Read More
Last night, something very interesting came our way. Something massive — documents and images outlining what appears to be a new Facebook iPhone app built around photo sharing. We teased what we had with a single image last night. Now, as promised, here’s the rest.
A few notes: the images we have suggest that while polished, this still may be a work in progress. It’s clear that some of these… → Read More
I love audiophiles. They spend $20,000 on a high end speaker system with zero flibber and low Db to THD levels (at least that’s what it sounds like they’re telling you) and then they slap on a gold remaster of a Macy Gray album and say “Can you hear the gravel in her voice?” It’s like buying a Ferrari just to slip Frankie Goes To Hollywood into the CD player and then… → Read More
Peter Pham, the president and a cofounder of mobile social startup Color, is no longer with the company, we’ve heard from multiple sources. The company launched publicly less than three months ago.
Color has been controversial because it raised so much venture capital – some $41 million – and had such a lousy launch reception. The service creates proximity based social networks based on who’s… → Read More
Well, the Royal Wedding is over. Wasn’t that wonderful? If you weren’t watching on TV, there were about a million ways to participate online. Millions watched on YouTube, Livestream and elsewhere. And even those who were there uploaded their own photos and videos, including this guy. I’ll call him the masked Union Jack freak. Is that some sort of S&M suit he’s wearing? It doesn’t seem… → Read More
Do you think white cables are BORRRR-ING SIDNEY BORRR-ING? So do the folks behind the Juicies Kickstarter project. These oddly shaped cables promise all sorts of fun as you plug in your sundry iGear. The cables will be “sustainable” and will come in multiple hues. → Read More
This past weekend, I headed down to Mexico with a group of friends for a bachelor party. It was a lot like The Hangover — if you replace tigers, Mike Tyson, and Zac Galifianakis with Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Clearly, we’re all in the tech scene. I bring this up because sometimes it can be telling to see what applications people actually use when they’re away from the normal routine. And… → Read More
Color Labs is assumed to be the newest combatant in the photo-sharing wars. Many people ripped its floppy launch, interface, crashes, and some are feeling creepy about the Chatroulette aspect. Then there was the backlash to the backlash, where believers applauded the vision, risk-taking, and promise of mining meta-data from phones. Even with the latest update pushed out last night to address some… → Read More
Bye bye 69 symbol! Valley media darling/scapegoat Color has updated its iPhone App to 1.0.2 to address certain um, user interface issues. Color’s launch caused a big splash in the Valley a couple weeks ago, due to what some people viewed as an unfairly allotted and foolish $41 million in funding as well as problems with the usability of the actual app — Namely that it didn’t work if other people… → Read More
In this week’s episode of Fly or Die, we cover two big launches—Amazon Cloud Drive and Color—and a Quirky DIY pocketKnife called the Switch. Just yesterday, Amazon launched its Cloud Drive, which is a general storage service in the cloud which is being pushed as a media locker, starting with music
Color is the $41 million photo app nobody can figure out. Is it the future or is it a dud on… → Read More
Stroll through downtown Palo Alto right now, and there’s a chance you’ll pass by one of the most buzzed-about startups in the Valley: Color, the new photo-swapping service that raised $41 million pre-launch and has been met with waves of hype and backlash. Color’s office is pretty nondescript from the outside — that is, until you notice the handwritten note that’s hanging on the door.
Color CEO… → Read More
We’re now two days into to the life of Color, and it’s still the tech story that everyone in the blogosphere wants to talk about. Yesterday, I detailed why so much of that talk is directly related to the massive funding they were able to secure, rather than the product itself. And I wondered why so many people seemed to be rooting for it to fail spectacularly rather than succeed? The answer, it… → Read More
People. Colors. Apps. Cats. Bacon. Organic. Bieber. Mobile. Social. Local. Pivot.
That’s the key slide in a faux-deck making the rounds this morning on the web. The subject of the ridicule? Color, the just-launched social sharing mobile app. Why such animosity towards a new player in a crowded space? Well, there are 41 million reasons.
The most fascinating aspect about Color right now isn’t the… → Read More
If you’re like most people in the tight-knit incestuous family we’d like to call the tech industry, all of the headlines in this Techmeme cluster on mobile social photo-sharing app Color nabbing $41 million are actually declaring one thing, “Tech Bubble, Now Official.”
While the Color team, helmed by Lala founder Bill Nguyen and BillShrink’s Peter Pham is impressive, the media frenzy… → Read More
By now, everyone and their dog have been able to form and voice their opinions about the $41 million in early-stage funding raised by mobile photo sharing app developer Color.
In the interest of feeding those that see the financing round as one of the most apparent signs of a major bubble in technology, consider this: the company spent more money acquiring the domain name color.com than most… → Read More
$41 million. From Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank. Pre-launch.
That’s how much a brand new startup called Color has to work with. Your eyebrows should already be raised, and here’s something to keep them fixed there: this is the most money Sequoia has ever invested in a pre-launch startup. Or, as the Color team put it, “That’s more than they gave Google.”
But the… → Read More
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