Social media is an opt-in world.

The playing field is level for brands and people, and everyone can customize the experience. No two Twitter, Facebook, foursquare, Gowalla, Tumblr etc. experiences are alike. There are a lot of social networks out there and the burden of building a social graph (your list of friends) is on the person behind the persona. Software has the power to do more and  many companies are afraid to take full advantage of the capabilities of our devices because the second they do, people start to feel uneasy.

The fact is that identities are already very well known by entities like Microsoft, Facebook, credit card companies and of course, Google. People are giving away their location to foursquare, Facebook, Gowalla, Google and more and for what? A deal. A special. But what if applications could be smarter? What if they could help you find new friends and enhance experiences without you having to actually do anything but the things that you are already doing? I know what just happened: You got a tingle in your spine.

Color is a new social network that supposes that your mobile device might actually be your identity and that things that you like to do on your device should help connect you to other people who are doing similar. Color has started experimenting in this arena by allowing you to take pictures and then analyzing your location and the noise in that location. With that data, it bonds you to other people who are in the same situation.

You open the app. You click on the Color icon. You take pictures or videos. You post them.

You can then see their pictures from the event where you were paired, but also other events. For example: I took a bunch of pictures at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference using Color. A day or 2 later while looking through the pictures of the new “friends” i acquired, I somehow “ended up” in the kitchen of someone who was preparing the most delicious looking seared fish.  I thumbed up the pictures and videos and made some comments. I am not totally certain how we got connected, but assume that we were both at the conference. They have commented on a few of my pictures since. It’s a little bit weird, but then again I like the random slice of life that it provides and the new contacts that I have made as a result.

Where Color really excels is during an event. We put Color to the test at the Ad Club Edge conference. Chief Product Officer, DJ Patil remarked during his talk that the application was designed to help facilitate the conversation and to give people a common place to begin an offline conversation, similar to what twitter can do, but in a specific time and place. What I noticed was that Color gave us a multi-faceted view of the event, which was held at convert venue Royale in Boston, in real time. I sat in front yet I could see backstage, the balcony, the bar, the audience, the view from the stage, the view from the back, from the couches and the happenings from the lobby all at once since Color updates come in real time at a lightning fast clip. So I felt like I had a bigger picture during the event which made my conversations after the event was over more rich because I had more things to talk about than just my view point.

So the next time you have an go to a concert, sporting event (haha, good luck at Fenway getting AT&T to work), conference, tweetup or cooking class get people to take pictures with you on Color to see what happens and keep your eyes on Color to see what they do next. They received $41 million in funding and have only scratch the surface of their plans thus far.