Re:Sequoia gives photo-sharing startup more money than they ...
by jcfrei on Thursday March 24, 2011 @09:49AM
(#2364034)
there's no absolute critical mass - what matters is how many of your most important peers use it. I'd say as soon as the probability for a random person to have a friend on said social network lies above 10-20% then you've achieved critical mass. it's a chicken and egg problem, which means you have to provide some value even if none of your friends use it - which is exactly what color is doing wrong.
Even if 1 million people used Color, I could those users concentrated in a few cities. Not only does the app require a vibrant, heavily active user-base that's willing to sacrifice their privacy, but it seems only useful in areas where the population density is relatively high. A 100 foot radius is an extremely limited area.
Furthermore, what's the point of seeing other people's pictures? I find very little "social" value in the realm of location sharing. I, for one, would not approach anybody that I see in my stream. Even in Twitter, I use location based services little to never. What am I missing out on?
Someone please tell me that I am wrong, but the success of Color requires far too many assumptions and is riding on a trivial purpose. I don't see how it deserves $41 million in funding... Color would work as a novel Facebook feature but, on its own, seems pointless.