I've never understood what problem color.com is trying to solve. They seem to have been in the photo sharing business before, but that problem seemed solved to me. I had a range of options how/where I wanted to share my photos. Those all had apps designed to make that process fairly easy. I'm not sure what the pain point was, they were trying to solve.
Live personal broadcasting also seems like an already solved problem. I understand they have money in the bank and need to try to find a competitive area, but I just don't understand the strategy here.
Color.com put together a great team, but markets that don't exist, don't care how great your team is.
You probably would have said the same before instagram appeared on the scene.
Live personal broadcast is far from a solved problem. To give an example, when's the last time you saw a private wedding live-streamed ? - it's a perfect example of a private event which has people who want to watch it online, yet it's something that's rarely done.
Instagram solved the problem of sterile looking mobile photos. Most people taking mobile photos are amateurs, and can use any help they can get to make their photos look better. That's why instagram succeeds. There's a lot of people who want their mobile photos to magically look better (or at least look more like instagram style photos).
Ustream and Qik have made live video sharing easy. The fact that most people aren't familiar with either is because there isn't much demand for live video broadcasting. I don't see push vs pull as being any kind of differentiator here. It was already trivial to ask someone to live broadcast an event (text messaging is ubiquitous) or to watch one in progress.
Live personal broadcasting also seems like an already solved problem. I understand they have money in the bank and need to try to find a competitive area, but I just don't understand the strategy here.
Color.com put together a great team, but markets that don't exist, don't care how great your team is.