• All Things Digital, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 12:21 PM

In late March, the digerati was abuzz about Color -- a proximity- and photo-based social network -- and its game-changing potential. With Color, "Augmented reality and nuanced social graphs may finally come of age," wrote John Battelle. Just a few months later, however, critics are calling Color dead man walking on the news that co-founder and president Peter Pham has left the company.

Color is the brainchild of CEO Bill Nguyen, who most recently sold Lala to Apple for about $80 million. Nguyen tells All Things D that Pham and Color had parted ways more than a month ago. What's more, "The launch was widely seen as a bust, in part due to the Color app's inscrutable interface and problematic lack of content when used in isolation," All Things D explains.

"Negative perceptions were especially compounded by the fact that Color had raised $41 million before even releasing a product." That money, in case you're wondering, mostly came from Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital and Silicon Valley Bank.

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