Photos are going social with apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic, and now Color, which is poised to become the next mega-app thanks to some interesting technical and social innovations that are a reflection of how the world has come to view social apps.
A few feats of engineering brilliance hide under Color’s slick surface. How does the app determine who’s in the same room with you? Not with GPS, which is flummoxed by floors because it can’t distinguish vertical distances between people. So Nguyen’s team taught Color to use a phone’s lighting and audio sensors, stitching their signals together with the sound and light environments of nearby devices to determine which user is where–it’s almost like a bat’s senses.
Color may also be the first social app that never requires you to name your friends, list your contacts or follow someone. Instead, it watches your interactions and builds your so-called elastic network of friends based on your real relationships. The startup created those algorithms with the help of D.J. Patil, the star data scientist with stints at Google and LinkedIn on his resume. The result: no more fake digital friendships.
Fast Company reports that Apple is getting in on the social photo space with some updates to iPhoto.
