Foot in Mouth in Technicolor?

Like almost everyone else I wrote a post about Color yesterday and couldn’t help but write another. The CEO of the much discussed $41M startup gave an interview with Matt Rosoff and explained that Color is not a photo sharing company, but instead “we’re a data mining company”. Wow. If Bill thought his ratings were suffering simply because the app didn’t work that well he hasn’t seen anything. Smartphone users HATE to hear that apps are ‘mining’ their data. The developers in our office immediately ‘threw up’ all over the comment.

Bill explained the business model as follows: “Advertising through the app. We’re going to build a intelligent system that allows businesses to participate with their customers. So when you walk into a restaurant and you use Color, and they’re also customers through a self-service Web interface — or actually a self-service iPad interface — every time you walk into the restaurant, your [first] name will show up with your picture. The maitre d’ or receptionist will know who you are, they’ll be able to welcome you, they’ll know the last time you were here, they’ll be able to see pictures if you took them here. They’ll be able to provide you better service than they’ve ever before, that’s going to drive up their revenue by increasing repeat business because we always want to go back where we feel welcome.”

At the end of the day I feel bad for Bill and their team, but I guess they can afford a little ribbing from the startup community. Best of luck guys…