Apple Isn’t Buying Failed Social Network Color, They’re Just Hiring The Guys Who Made It

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colorapp

A flurry of rumors have surrounded the failed video app start-up Color over the past 24 hours. First a rumors hit that Color was going to completely shutdown after failing to gain widespread use after a year. A few hours later a second rumor claimed that Color wasn’t shutting down, they were just being bought by Apple.

It appears that both rumors were completely wrong and sort of right at the same time. Color – as a company – isn’t being purchased by Apple for an eight figure sum, but Apple is buying Color’s team of 20 engineers for a modest figure of $2 million to $5 million.

Liz Gannes of All Things D reported this morning that:

Apple is not buying Color’s technology, intellectual property, domain names or liabilities. Those are being left with the company, which still has considerable cash in the bank — something like $25 million — and is going to be wound down.

Neither Apple or Color have commented on the rumored deal. All Things D’s report attributes the conflicting reports about Color to a storm of “bad blood” between Color’s employees, CEO, former employees and Apple. And who can really blame them all for being mad at each other when their app idea bombed?

The hiring of Color’s engineers makes sense for Apple, who has been adding more native social features to iOS 6 like Shared Photostreams. We’re just hoping they don’t decide to use the engineers to take another stab at creating a social network. The world doesn’t need a Color Ping.

Source: All Things D

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