I might be a little late to the game. But I had to wait to publish this blog post.

Almost a month ago now, Color, was released to the world. Along with the tech press being set on fire about it receiving $41M investment before it was even launched. For those of you living under a rock, the color app is a photo sharing app, but it only shows you photos within 100m of where you are positioned. Now there are a few other things it does which is quite clever ‘scary’. Each time you take a photo, it records your geolocation (obviously), data from the iPhone’s light sensor, a short sound recording. It uses this data to try and pair you up with someone similar, apparently.

The actual app itself, is not worth much at all. To prove this point, I myself have just launched a new location based photo sharing app (hence the delay for the post). My app is called ‘Local Eyes’. How is Local Eyes different to Color? Apparent to the user, there is little difference. I have spent a total of 12 hours on the app. Is 12 hours of my time worth $41M? I wish! (If you would like to give me $41M for 12 hours of my time, please let me know!)

The investment is not in the app, it is in the company behind it “Color Labs”. There is a lot going on in the background, not just with the ‘Color’ app, but the company itself. They are a data mining company, data is worth a heck of a lot of money.

Unfortunately, Color has had a bit of a rollercoaster ride since launch. At launch it got all the press it could have ever hoped for. This meant that thousands and thousands of people will have downloaded the app. (I don’t know the actual number). However, when people hear that an app has received that number of investment. They expect the world. Unfortunately color was a confusing app. It therefore received a lot of negative reviews. Getting back from negative reviews is very tough.

The reason why people don’t get Color, is because it only works when there are already users around you. Most users wont be the first people to share images. Not unless they know there are people there. I believe color should have launched at SXSW. That would have been a perfect launchpad for it. People would get the concept straight away. It is great for small events.

Local Eyes on the other hand, limits photos to 1 mile, and so it is more about what is going on around you, and not just the same thing you are seeing. I am about leave my full time job to concentrate more on (amongst other things) Local Eyes, and I have got lots of cool things I want to add to it, such as Instagram integration.

If you have any comments on Local Eyes, please let me know. But also, bear in mind, I have so far only spent 12 hours on it, working by myself and I dont claim it to be worth $41M ;)