Color: How to use and first impressions.

Color has been making a lot of headlines lately.  Bill Nguyen has already raised $41 million for the photo-sharing app.  Social media streams were filled with the news that Nguyen, who sold his online music company Lala to Apple in 2009, bought "color.com" for $350,000.  "Colour.com" was also purchased for a total estimated domain haul of $500,000.

As of now Color has no Facebook interaction, no logins, no way to view the pictures you take outside of the app.  So what does the future hold for the new hot social service?

Color's concept comes at a good time.  Mobile phones are coming with higher quality cameras.  Apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram have made mobile photo sharing the new hip way to look at the world.  Color taps into your phone's GPS to automatically create groups of people around you.  You then take pictures and video of your surroundings and share them to your group.  The larger the group, the more ways to view the event.

Starting to use Color is not the most intuitive experience.  After installing the app, Color will not even open without your GPS enabled, a major battery drain.  Once launched you enter your first name.  It then asks for you to take a picture of yourself. Not the easiest for me with on rear-facing lens Droid X.  You then snap pictures of your surroundings.  It displays all of your pictures in a group album.  I happened to be the only one taking pictures in my living room at the time (hopefully) so my group album consisted of my new headshot, my name, and a picture of my TV and window.

I was able to use my favorite photo app Vignette for Android.  The pictures came out great.  I'd show them to you but as mentioned above, there's no way to view the pictures outside of the app.

Right now Color reminds me a bit of Google Wave when it first came out.  Difficult to use, hard to explain, and no easy way to fully utilize it.  With Wave, I didn't understand it until I began developing a project with four other people.  We used it to communicate and brainstorm.  It worked perfectly.  I would image if I was at SXSW and everyone around me was using Color, it would be a smash hit.

I'm assuming Color will eventually have a way to view your albums outside your phone.  Upload your group shoot to a blog or Facebook.  But for now its tough to use.  I find it hard to believe Bill Nyguyen raised so much capital without a thought of how to monetize the service and make it appealing for people to use.  Keep an eye on Color.  Could be the next hip thing.