I think they're trying to enable "introverts," give them confidence and an icebreaker to approach people around them. Your solution, "put away your phone" is easier said than done, especially for introverts. Personally I hate being glued to my phone in public as many people are, because it reminds me of how far apart people are by using their phone as a crutch to not interact.

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

I believe that this the biggest fallacy about Color. The only way to enable introverts to get up to people and talk to them is by practice and overcoming the fear of rejection. I didn't say that "put away your phone" is easy for introverts, I just said that "keeping your phone" doesn't make it any better. How do you think could a photo app give them confidence or an icebreaker? First impression is mostly body language and walking up to someone with confidence can only be trained, but not "hacked" with an app.

Are you an introvert? I'm pretty introverted, I have a good deal of social anxiety, but not quite agoraphobia. I think one of the scariest thing about trying to talk to someone you've never met is not knowing anything about them. I can't just go up to someone and say "Hey, how 'bout them giants" unless I know they are a Giants fan.

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.

Introvert and social recluse are not the same thing.

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.

You are correct that being introverted and a social recluse are not the same thing.

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.

I agree with the speaking in public, that's a bad example.

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.

tangent... the point is, he's trying to enable people to converse and interact in person in a public setting.

You're confusing introversion with shyness. An introvert looks in at themselves and isn't looking for a way to meet others. That's what makes them an introvert. Someone that's shy however may want to meet or interact with others but cannot overcome their shyness.

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

I actually like the concept of color, but they really fucked up the launch. I don't see the use case as you describe.

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 isn't because it will let people share photos with nearby people. It's because anyone who installs it will have authorized Color to do personal data collection on a massive scale. The photo sharing bit is little more than a pretext to get them to install it.

Did you listen to the interview? The CEO explicitly said that they collect no personal data, and that the only data transferred to their servers is photographs, their locations and the iPhone ID - of which they have no way of tying back to an actual person.

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.

Photos, locations and iPhone ID seem pretty personal to me.

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.

I bet they care even less about privacy

AFAIK in Japan there are gadgets similar to color in concept, that will bip if someone nearby has set its gadget in the same way (preferred color and such). So the concept isn't new after all.