Hiding behind a stupid app that lets you see pictures of the people around you doesn't solve the problem of social interaction in any way, because you are still separated from them until you walk up and say Hi. What the app really does is make you complacent in your comfort zone.

It's kind of funny that the author talks about proximity, since proximity truly benefits the most of having real people around you and interacting with them in the good old fashioned way. Talking to the guys, flirting a bit with the ladies. There is really no need for an additional layer of abstraction (like the Color app).

Its hard to predict how color might affect an outdoor street atmosphere, but their goals are admirable.

Color provides this weird insight into people's lives you wouldn't normally get. It's what I absolutely loved about facebook in 2005, I made some awesome friends that way, who often happened to be introverts, and eventually people got up tight about it and locked stuff down.

I'm an extrovert (happy speaking publicly, I think out loud and so on) but not by nature particularly sociable. At least one good friend is the opposite.

Introversion / extroversion is a way of interacting and thinking, not a measure of desire to interact with people socially.

Extroversion is the characteristic of being outgoing and comfortable in social interactions. It has nothing to do with speaking publicly which is more about controlling performance anxiety, many actors and other performers are introverted in private life.

People who self declare to be "not by nature particularly sociable" may be introverts, some of them may be social recluses, what they aren't is extrovert.

But in terms of people who self declare themselves "not by nature particularly sociable" not being extroverted, I disagree and offer myself up as an example.

I am an extrovert. Psychological testing confirms this (and I'm a strong extrovert, not just marginal and this has been tested more than once) and no-one who has ever met me or worked with me would suggest anything else.

But I am also not by nature particularly sociable. I am an only child and by default prefer my own company (or that of a small number of close, established friends). I could happily spend days on end alone and often turn down the chance to go out because I don't particularly like the experience.

Extroversion is a way of thinking. While it may correlate with sociability, being an extrovert and being anti-sociable are in no way mutually exclusive.

If Color does indeed help true introverts catalog the humans around them then it's actually pretty creepy.

Imagine being at a baseball game and in between innings you can pull up pics from all over the stadium.

Or you're a high schooler in a suburban town bored on a friday night and you can see pics of what your class mates are doing all over town.

The 150 ft range is stupid...it should automatically adjust to cover an area of interest whether that's a sporting event, party, apartment building or small town.

The reason Color got funded is because, as the founder explains, this is a new kind of social graph and could easily become as huge as Facebook.

The interesting point is, end users don't give a damn for "social graphs". They just want to be able to connect to their friends, and maybe a friend of a friend in the very odd edge case.

The only people who get excited about social graphs those who see it as a data mine.

That alone could be a killer application.

Thinking back at the Color launch, I don't know what they could have done different. They had a lot of coverage, but the lead story was criticism over the amount of money raised.

This leads me to think that the startup and tech audience today is a lot more pessimistic when fundraising is involved. Only a few years ago raising $41M from Sequoia would get a lot of positive attention. It would be something that every entrepreneur would loved to shout from the rooftops. The lead story would be 'there must be something interesting here' as opposed to 'wtf are they smoking'.

The attitude may have changed because of the financial crisis, or general pessimism, or because the audience is expecting every startup now to be bootstrapped and funded with $10k.

Color did find themselves in a tough situation with a reaction that they likely didn't foresee. I wish some of the initial coverage was in-depth and analytical as some of the follow-up coverage has been. The entire point of pre-briefing and embargo's is supposed to be to avoid the rash quick judgement.

I'm betting they have some hidden tech or application or some sort of insight which causes the valuation. It's also very possible that Sequoia just really wanted to get into the space and just needed a team to team up with and make something epic.

Time will tell

Will a social recluse build the next social network? It seems a bit counter intuitive, but then it's supposed to have worked for Mark Zuckerberg. Certainly a lot of people would appreciate networking without investing any work. No more "become my friend" button - just stand next to somebody and kaboom, you have a new friend.

Quite possibly, if only to mop up the "long tail" left by Facebook.

After watching this interview, I'm firmly convinced that they're going to find some way to make it work, or find that one little piece of the app that people latch on to and build that out. One of the things Bill said got me really excited, and that was the idea of being able to walk into a room and see something like "you might like to talk to Jason because you both work in the technology field, here's his LinkedIn profile".

$41 million gets you a lot of leeway to experiment and make it work.