Multifamily Social Media Watch: What Is Color…And Is It The Next Big Thing?

Most of you use Facebook, and many of you have become quite familiar with Twitter. While you may be content with these social media applications – guess what! More are always on the way.

Let’s discuss one of the newest players – currently available only for iPhone, but an Android platform is on the way.

COLOR.COM – check it out! They just received $41M of funding, so we can probably assume they are planning nothing short of social media mutiny.

Color is a mobile photo-sharing application. Described succinctly by Mashable as a “public photo and video-sharing app for groups” WITHOUT “the typical friending or following that you’ll find on Facebook, Twitter, Path or Instagram. Instead, Color chooses which pictures you see based on your location and how often you’re sharing photos with someone else. Every photo and video is public, not only to the people you consider your friends, but to any stranger within your proximity.”

Color knows where you are. So when you take a photo on Color it’s automatically shared not just your friends, but also with the people in your physical proximity (generally within 100 feet, though this changes depending on the population density of your area).

The people that built Color call it “an elastic network.” That’s because if you walk down the street, the people you share your photos with will change, and the people you see photos from will change, too.  It sounds pretty cool. If enough people use Color—the app, I mean—it’s completely foreseeable that people will use Color to meet folks taking groovy photos. It also seems like using Color might be an excellent way to eliminate horrendous typos from our lives forever (!)

I’m not sure how comfortable initial users will be with the Big Brother capabilities of Color, written about in some reviews as “the ultimate voyeur app.” But I have a feeling that those using Color will be longtime transparency fans who already live in public and who aren’t worried about having a homing device tracking their every move and pinging it to both friends and random people nearby.

Potential Multifamily Application: For those types of people who are moving into a new area short-term (weeklong vacation to Asheville, who to hang out with, where to find a good bar?) or long term (new apartment in Brooklyn, only know my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s cousin who lives in Queens, where to find like-minded souls?) it does seem Color could be, as it aspires to be, “nothing less than the ultimate local discovery tool.” Imagine a potential resident coming to view your property (or simply driving by it) and loading a series of pictures taken by staff and other residents – like a spontaneous photo tour with personality currently difficult to display on typical Internet apartment listings. This is one to keep an eye on!

Using Color already? Wary of this sort of transparent technology? Tell us about it here or on our Facebook page!