Color end completely off: Mobile internet biggest bubble disillusionment

Yesterday evening, color in the official website posted Bulletin, "We hope that users can enjoy real-time video sharing functions." It is a pity that color will no longer be served after December 31, 2012. ”

According to TechCrunch, some of the core assets of color have been bought by Apple at a price of 7 million dollars, and more than 20 of color's engineers will join Apple. Color, once known as a "revolutionary social application", has been the biggest mobile internet bubble in recent years, from the heat of the last 21 months to the ultimate disillusionment.

Establishment

Color is born with a golden spoon, just founded then get 41 million U.S. dollars financing, of which Sequoia capital of 25 million U.S. dollars, Bain Capital 9 million U.S. dollars, Silicon Valley Bank risk loans of 7 million U.S. dollars. After the financing of the color of the valuation reached 167 million dollars.

Several founders also have excellent backgrounds. Among them, Bill Nguyen once created the music sharing service lala.com, after was bought by the Apple 8 million dollars. Another founder, Peter Pham, once created the financial Services tool Billshrink. Product owner DJ Patil is Lindedin's chief scientist.

In the input, color is also unambiguous, only the purchase of color.com domain name costs 350,000 of dollars. This is already the equivalent of start-up funds for several start-up companies.

What is color exactly? It is a mobile image application, without user name and password, users can open after the release of photos, view the nearby users posted photos, for "praise" or comments, can also join nearby groups created by people.

For better publicity, color also creates a new word for "resilient social networking". The so-called elasticity means that the color will automatically divide the user into different groups according to the light intensity, distance, direction, speed and even sound of the environment. For example, there are three users in the vicinity, two are in the house, one is outside the house, then two people in the House will automatically become a group.

Disillusionment

The color's development team said at the time that it was hoped that the mobile features of the software would create a distinctive "post-PC age" social network. Bill Nguyen stressed that the post-PC era was a huge fundamental change, with users needing to share more and more information in real time, and color would compete with Facebook in social communications outside the PC.

Sequoia Capital once said of color: "Silicon Valley every 10 years will appear 1~2 a change of the world company." Color is one of them. "We were very excited to be able to invest in them," according to Doug Leone, a Sequoia partner, who was able to invest in color just days before the color was officially released. ”

Full marketing, let color become a much-anticipated app, countless netizens waiting for this "revolutionary" product release. But when it was officially released on March 24, 2011, it quickly hit Waterloo. Many users enter color after the confused, completely do not understand how to use, and color does not provide any novice guidelines.

Countless users in the App Store comments angry lambaste color "pit Dad", and even often flash back, not normal operation. In the days after the release, more than 60% of users gave color a minimum rating.

Then color broke out the rumors of a team feud. An employee even took the founder Bill Nguyen to court, saying that bill often intimidated, harassed and punished his staff, and even repeatedly treated his son with violence.

Experience

PandoDaily, editor-in-chief of Science and technology blog Sarah Lacy, said that the current entrepreneurial philosophy of the leadership is not a clear advantage, with a successful product, stable user base and promising growth prospects, commercialization will be successful. "Without good products, a great ambition is ultimately an illusion." ”

"The problem with color is that because of overconfidence, you want to be different on too many levels. "Yang Bo, founder of Watercress, said in a sharing meeting at the innovation Workshop. For example, he said:

Color at the market and company level want to do next big Thing, so luxury-type start-up; at the product level, want to do the world's largest user mobile data transceiver Mining, at the functional level to do the first large-scale temporary mobile social network, at the design level to subvert the existing ui/ue habits.

"If the odds are 50% for each level, then the success rate is only 6.25%," Yang Bo said. So it's a miracle to succeed. The key question is "at the same time." It would be better to make sure that the core innovations are successful at one level and then subvert something else. ”

In his view, "users need at least at least one level of product, function, design to understand a new product with reference to what he already knows." All overturned, the user has no reference material, will have no confidence to understand this thing. ”