Love it or loath it, the smartphone app Color is one of the most innovative Web products to have launched this year. It has a user experience that is as unique and different as Twitter was 5 years ago. This has led to confusion about how to use Color and questions about its value. In this post we look at the early uses of Color and analyze its chances of emulating the success of Twitter.

Color launched last month in a whirl of hype, mostly due to the eye-opening $41 million prelaunch funding. But since then, the user experience has been the center of focus. Many people have complained that the app is difficult to understand - mainly because the benefits of the app are only clear once you use it amongst a crowd of people and in real-time. The user interface of the app has also been accused of being confusing and inconsistent.

What is Color, Again?
Color enables you to share "photos, videos and conversations" with a group of people who are at the same location as you. The idea is that it's only useful when you're in the proximity of a group of people. That word, proximity, has since become a trending term among the tech set. Rather than being about your social connection to someone, Color is about how close you are to them. Is this the next wave of mobile apps? Color is hoping so.

The ideal use case for Color then, is for events with large groups of people - like a concert or conference. Color ostensibly allows you to share your experience with that group; as well as augment your experience by giving you alternate views and allow you to see things that you'd otherwise have missed. ReadWriteWeb's resident hacker, Tyler Gillies, recently used Color at a tech conference and noted that it allowed him to see slides from many different sessions.

Color Goes to the Movies
In mid-April, Color set out to showcase its new app at the premiere of a new Hollywood film called "Water for Elephants." At the event, 49 people took 788 photos using Color - according to the event's web page. In scanning those photos, they range from official and fan photos of the movie's stars as they walk down the the red carpet, to photos of fans as they wait for the action to start.

If the goal was "to bring the red carpet to fans who could not be in Manhattan," as HollywoodNews.com claimed, then that didn't work. While I personally believe that the world can never have enough photos of Reese Witherspoon, it's doubtful that 788 blurry photos of the red carpet was a compelling experience for people who didn't attend.

The real question is: what value did the people taking those photos get from Color, while the event was happening? I couldn't find any of that user feedback online and so I've asked Color for comment. In the meantime, I asked the ReadWriteWeb community via Twitter if they've used Color, and if so was it of value