Sure, they've got good taste. But they still might be jerks.

Color

It was supposed to be a tech-world slam-dunk. Instead, it became a cautionary tale about what some feel could become a tech "bubble."

Color, a photo-sharing mobile app, stoked excitement in the startup community that was virtually unrivaled. Before it had a single user, Color had raised $41 million from investors. So certain were its Silicon Valley creators that, reportedly, they turned down a $200 million buyout offer from Google.

With much fanfare, Color launched in March 2011. But users soon complained that the app, designed to share photos with the people around you, often didn't find anyone for them to share with. Its creators were forced to announce they were working on a major overhaul on the same day it was released.

Color tallied about 1 million users at its peak and, more recently, was reportedly down to about 100,000. Compare that to the roughly 100 million users of photo app Instagram (it had about 27 million when Facebook bought it last year), and you see the problem.

Color will be shutting down on New Year's Eve.

Zynga

It reads like an old VH1 "Behind the Music" episode.

"Zynga was riding high. Love them or hate them, its games like "Mafia Wars" and "FarmVille" were everywhere, clogging up Facebook pages and spurring millions of bored casual gamers to pay real cash for virtual cows. Then, it all came crumbling down."

OK, maybe "crumbling down" is an overstatement. But things in The 'Ville definitely didn't go Zynga's way in 2012.

In October, Zynga announced it was laying off 5% of its employees, shutting down its studio in Boston and proposing the closure of others in Japan and England.

(It would be entirely cynical to suggest Zynga hoped to bury that news by making the announcement during Apple's much-hyped iPad Mini event. So we won't suggest that here.)

Facebook, which gets a cut when people spend money on games such as "FarmVille," said that income from Zynga was down 20% over last year.

And, like unskilled mafia warriors, Zynga shot itself in the foot again in March when it bought the company that makes mobile game "Draw Something" for an eye-popping $180 million. But fascination with "Draw Something" dropped off fast. When's the last time you played?

Twitter twits

OK, so you can post something stupid anywhere. But there's something about Twitter's rapid-fire, 140-character bursts that brings out the stupid in people.

From companies embarrassing themselves to celebrities behaving badly, it's hard to name just one Twitter doofus. But here are a few nominees:

• Chris Brown, the hip-hop star, consistently used Twitter to make himself look like a foul-mouthed rage monster. Instead of thanking fans after winning a Grammy, he launched a profanity-laced bromide at his "haters." Then there were the misogynistic, scatological insults he hurled at comedian-critic Jenny Johnson before "quitting" Twitter. (He's back.)

• McDonald's thought it would get a little of that social media love it had been hearing about in January when it created the #McDstories hashtag -- asking customers to share their favorite McDonald's memories. Then it found out what happens when you give the Internet open access to your advertising effort. McDonald's yanked the campaign after just two hours and countless food-horror stories about fingernails, insects and bouts of food poisoning.

• Spike Lee was, like many Twitter users, angered by the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Tweeting the home address of shooter George Zimmerman would have been questionable enough. But Lee mistakenly tweeted out the address of a couple who have a son by that name. They had to leave their home after being besieged by reporters and threats. Lee would later apologize and "reach an agreement" with the aggrieved family.

• Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou was on her way to the Olympics when she tried a little ill-advised Twitter humor. With so many African Olympians in London, "the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!" she wrote. Her tweet was quickly criticized as racially insensitive, and Greece's Olympic Committee barred her from participating in the Games.

• Oprah Winfrey had been gushing for weeks about how much she loved the new Microsoft Surface tablet, culminating in this tweet: "Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts." Unfortunately for her, those words were followed by ... "via Twitter for iPad."