The Case for Color

With Color's recent funding of $41 million, a lot of people are skeptical of whether that windfall of money can be justified for an infant startup.

While I share some of that general skepticism permeating the web, I've also thought of some justifications for such a large investment in these circumstances:

• There is a revolution happening in photo sharing. 
  Sure, the mobile app they cobbled together may seem vacant and useless, but the company's future will be much more than a simple app or website - they will control the entire photo sharing ecosystem, which transcends websites, apps, devices, etc...
• GPS technology will change how we share photos. 
  In the past, meta-properties of photo galleries were somewhat static (e.g. geographic coordinates, time taken, etc...).  The future holds much more - for example, say you want to see photos from an event at that took place at CU-Boulder on May 31st, 2010.  You can't really do that with Facebook or Picasa.  Will you be able to do so with Color? Perhaps.
• Social circles are becoming much more dynamic. 
  Color will further enable this change by allowing people to form fleeting social circles with people in their vicinity.
• Color will also revolutionize advertising - mobile, web-based, whatever.  Again, the possibilites here are pretty limitless.
• Color reminds me of Twitter. 
  Some of the earliest criticisms of Twitter surrounded the idea of "I don't care about the minutae of activities in which my friends are involved."  Criticisms of Color have mirrored those criticisms.  As people start tweeting more relevant items, those criticisms are disappearing.  I'm sure the similar criticisms of Color will disappear quickly as well, once it gains more adoption and relevance.
• Photo sharing is quickly becoming platform-independent. 
  There are already nice cameras that exist that can geotag and upload photos as you take them.  This technology will become even more prevalent in the future.
• There exists collateral (albeit, a small amount). 
  Color invested $500,000 in domain names.  Even if it completely fails, these domain names will still have value.
• Starting a revolution requires a good team. 
  Rather than wait for a group of no-names to get lucky with a product that gains traction, the VC's behind the deal have consciously decided to proactively fund a team that they know can get the job done.

Most of these justifications are purely my speculation at this point.  However, thinking about Color from a more generalized standpoint certainly opens up a lot of interesting justifications like these.

As a sidenote, here's an excellent deal-based justification of Color's funding.