Path co-founders Dave Morin and Dustin Mierau want you to share all the intimate details of your life on their social network app, including details you wouldn’t post on Facebook, like when you’re sleeping and when you’ve woken up.
But unlike Facebook, Path allows users to share such information with an exclusive list of friends–or just with yourself if you choose to do so. Now the San Francisco-based company, which was launched last November and boasts about one million users, is launching a major makeover that rebrands the app as a “smart journal.”
Where Facebook has what it calls profile pages, users of the startup’s apps have what are called paths. Path compares them to a private diary or journal that they’ve chosen to share with their closest friends and family.
When Path originally launched last year, users could only share videos and photos. With Path 2–which is available on iPhone and Android–users can now share a host of new information:
- Thoughts
- Music
- Videos
- Location
- Automatic
Users can still only pick 150 people with whom they want to share their path, keeping to the company’s novel way of encouraging sharing within a hyper-private environment.
Path’s leaders say the journal is “smart” because it also expands a feature called FriendRank, which suggests path-worthy friends. The app can now offer other types of suggestions – though an internal algorithm – like what kind of music you might be listening to based on what you’ve posted in the past and what’s popular on Path.
The idea behind the app, according to Morin, is that most people aren’t careful about adjusting their privacy settings on Facebook, which makes information public by default. He’s betting that Path, which has raised over $8 million in venture-capital funding, can give users who are addicted to social networking a safe place to share all the things they wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing on Facebook.
Morin said.
“The devil is in the defaults. The default experience is a private experience that is never available on the public Internet without your choosing.”
To that end, Path doesn’t allow friends to post on another friend’s path. There is still the option of sharing your information more publicly because Path allows you to automatically post your updates to Facebook, Foursquare or Twitter.
Morin said the company has been working on adding new features for the last six months, but turned to the idea of a smart journal after getting user feedback that people were primarily using Path as a place for their family to check in on their daily life in a more detailed way than Facebook.
Most people, for instance, wouldn’t post on Facebook when they are going to sleep or how long they slept for. But one of Path 2’s new features lets you literally put your app to sleep.
Here’s how it works:
Before you go to bed, you tell the app to go to sleep, letting your closest friends and family known you’re out for the night. The app will stop sending you notifications while you get your much-needed shut-eye. Then, when you’ve woken up and turned the app back on, it will post how long you’ve slept for. It will even give you witty rejoinders when you return, like “early to bed, early to rise” or “serious pillow time.”
The makeover also comes with a slick new design that features a one page scrolling view of a user’s path with a large cover photo and a smaller profile picture. It’s data is also now fully real-time, following in the footsteps of other apps like the Q&A site Quora.
Path 2 boasts a new feature, called Automatic, that can tell when you’ve made changes to your daily routine. For instance, if you start spending time in a new neighborhood, the app will add that information to your path. Similarly, if you travel by plane to a new city, Path can tell based on the distance you traveled that you likely took a plane and will post that trip automatically.
The company in its blog post said.
“Path is now a journal that writes itself. Less effort from you, more stories in your path.”
COMMENTARY: I covered Path in two previous blog posts dated November 15, 2010, when they announced their launch, and on February 2, 2011, when they announced raising $8.5 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
When Morin and Mierau originally launched they described the idea behind Path thusly:
- Path would be "A quality network" with a limit of 50 close friends. When users posted something on Path it was not an act of broadcasting or self-promotion, but sharing a moment with someone who really knows you.
- Path would be a “A giving network, not a taking network.” The purpose of Path would be to capture the daily “moments” that convey joy, particularly when the recipient of those posts knows what they mean to the person expressing them.
- Path would allow users to share pictures (only) about their daily lives. Morin said philosophically, “You can literally see your friend’s lives through their eyes.”
I never did determine how Path was going to make money, but I assume Kleiner Perkins believes they have a lot of future potential otherwise they would not have plunked down that $8.5 million.
I didn't think much about Path's business concept which I felt was more philosophically-based, non-sensical, didn't offer much in terms of features, and placing a limit of 50 close friends would limit their growth.
One year later, Morin and Mierau have redefined "A quality network" by increasing the limit from 50 to 150 close friends. So, I was right about their original limit as being too much of a constraint.
Here's what David Morin said about Path at the Web 2.0 Summit in October 2011:
Web 2.0 Summit embraces David Morin's idea for a socail network for some of the more intimate moments of our lives, from love to death. David Morin is the Founder of Path.
They no longer just allow photo sharing, but users can now share music and video. Here's what they say on their website:
"The designers and engineers at Path have dreamed up and realized the Smart Journal–a journal that’s with you everywhere you go, posts entries without your effort, combines photo, video, music, people, places, and text, and most importantly, includes your loved ones. Path upholds the expectations for privacy of both the mobile phone and the journal with its limited, intimate, more personal network."
Morin and Mierau have also integrated Path with Facebook, Twitter and foursquare and added an "auto-pilot" feature so it even shares your personal moments and thoughts with your quality network automatically. Here's what they say on their website:
"For those of you who enjoy sharing on networks like Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook, we’ve made it simple to check-in, upload photos and videos, and tweet directly from Path. A feature we call Automatic enables Path to learn about you as you go about your daily routine. You can optionally choose to have your Path updated with stories about your life—automatically. Path is a journal that writes itself."
That Automatic feature is without any doubt the biggest new change to Path since I did my original profiles. As far as I know, nobody other social network, land-based or mobile offers something similar. Here's what the website says about the Automatic feature:
"Path learns about you and automatically posts when you go to a different neighborhood or city. More posts in your Path, without your effort."
Thankfully, the Automatic feature is an entirely optional feature that you can turn on and off on your iPhone or the Path website through your personal settings.
Path still remains a lightweight, mobile-only, private social network (150 friend limit), but with added features making it more fun for its users. They now have one million users, but I wonder how many of them are truly active, and what's their strategy to monetize the site. Time will only tell, but let's hope that Morin and Mierau are on the right Path.
Courtesy of an article dated November 30, 2011 appearing in The Wall Street Journal
Thanks to give me these type of information...
Posted by: Clipping path Company | 03/06/2012 at 12:12 AM