Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

That'd be true if we weren't talking about an iPhone app that users will install without ever actually going to the web site behind it.

  1st User Experience:
  - open App Store
  - search for "Color"
  - install

  2nd - nth User Experience:
  - click the "Color" button on your iPhone

Notice how we never visit the actual site. TheColorApp.com would work just fine for them.

View on HN

Only true if they planned to exit on the app alone. Maybe the plan is ambitious enough to warrant the expense.

In unrelated news: a friend of mine casually referred to her boss as a 'green' on Saturday... apparently it is the result of popular personality test that everyone in the company has to take. The result (one or more 'colors') is part of their email signature for internal correspondence.

Totally Agree. I think photo sharing is a classic "Thin Wedge" that Dixon and Wilson have written about before. Think about how powerful Color could be:

Business Networking - Go to a conference and create an ad hoc social network. You are basically automating what Fridge and Lanyrd are doing now.

Neighborhood Social Networking - Need to organize a carpool or soccer practice schedule? Moms can set up a network with their phones while sitting in the stands watching their kids play.

Same for schooling, retailing, and dozens of other opportunities where you might want to let people communicate then sell them stuff. If nothing else it might be so it is easier for advertisers to remember and more easily access the self serve ad mechanisms the founders described.

I could see all of those eventually having a traditional "Web" page though it might be assembled and interacted with very differently than a traditional soc net.

I can remember a couple of nights in my youth when I might have enjoyed putting together a location-specific ad hoc social network... right around closing time.

The neighborhood social networking example is not as straight forward as it sounds. The barrier to use isn't just the user experience, but the metaphor behind the application. Most regular people have a hard time learning new metaphors to interact with technology.

Do you really think that an entire group of middle-aged moms would all download an app on their smartphones to co-ordinate carpools? No! They don't want to deal with technology. Most likely they will just talk person to person (what a novel idea) or use their existing email list from the team.

Don't mean to get too personal, but this kind of thinking is one of the disadvantages from living in Silicon Valley. You become disconnected from how the majority of people live and interact with technology

Exactly. Normal people won't use technology unless it does something they can't, but need to do, or makes something significantly easier. They don't just use tech for its own sake like I do.

Green, red, blue, and with rainbows in the middle?

I think I know the test.

But if you ever want to be more than just an app, lets say a BRAND, then IT IS important.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com