Path – A New Personal Network Helps Mobile Users Share Photos With People They Trust
Path, the new personal network is now available as an iPhone app; apps for Android and Blackberry will soon follow.
Social networking sites are definitely the place to be for young people who are fond of spending most of their free time on the web. They aren’t bad for other types of users either. It’d be easy to say that there’s room for a ton more of these sites on the web, since we only have three big ones, namely Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, but in reality I can’t think of one thing right now that could make another social networking site worthwhile when we already have those three. Unless it’s build especially for smartphones in which case I must admit the company behind has come up with a pretty great idea.
Ok, enough with talking about social networking sites in general. A photo-centric social networking site called path was recently introduced. Build for smartphones, its main goal is to allow people to share information strictly with other people they know and trust. Path will launch later on today and compared to other similar sites it will limit users to 50 friends. So let’s talk more about the whole idea behind Path. The company behind it has explained its purpose extremely well on the Path blog. It reads: “Practically all of us carry a camera phone, and our photos tell the stories of our lives. Starting today, we hope that Path is the place you will always feel comfortable being yourself and sharing the story of your life with your closest friends and family.”
Path will initially be available for the iPhone and should be found on the App store pretty soon. That doesn’t mean that users of other devices won’t be able to access it. They’ll just have to settle for checking out Patch through their phone’s web browser. In case you were wondering, Path has been called a personal network. While that sounds somewhat the same as social network, it’s in many ways different. A social network is all about socializing and gathering as many “friends” as you possibly can. You’ve seen people on Facebook with over 1000 friends. They definitely don’t remember all of them but they can add them with no problem. A personal network (I’m not a hundred percent sure but I think Path is the first of this type) users are only interested in close friends and family. As the creating company explains, a personal network isn’t meant to replace your existing social networks, but augment them.
Apparently, because of the 50 friend limit, you’ll always be sure that you can post any kind of photo or detail, no matter how personal. Path is a place where people can be themselves (aka you won’t have to limit yourself from commenting on your boss, fearing that he/she might see it and decide to fire you). So why was this limitation to 50 friends enforced anyway? Why not 20 or 100? Some research of Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar proves that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships the human brain can handle at any given time.
Moreover, even though we have about 5 people we might consider our “best” or closest friends and another 20 we keep in touch with frequently, 50 is the number of people we might trust, try to build more trust with and value in our lives. Once you’ve found those on Path, you can actually focus on sharing and you won’t have to trace down even more people to friend them. One of Path’s founders, Dave Morin also mentioned that the problem with Facebook and Twitter is that people are quite tempted to reveal a lot of information about themselves, but because they’re somewhat forced to open up to a wider social circle, they will hold back opening up if their network contains even one person that they don’t particularly trust.
A nice thing about Path is that it’s quite easy to understand. You see something, you like it, you take a photo of it with your camera phone (whether it’s a bird, tree, family member). You can then add context in the form of tags for people, places and things. According to Path, the tags will provide three types of context which are meant to help capture a moment. Another feature called see will allow people to mention whether they’ve been there to witness the moment you’ve shared. The main idea behind Path is to increase the meaning and understanding between close friends. It’s a sort of Facebook but not really. Instead of placing the emphasis on you or the endless number of people that surround you, it places the emphasis on bonds between people and sharing of interesting and valuable moments.
Behind the San Francisco based company called Path are two people who’ve worked for some pretty well known names in the industry, Dave Morin, an ex Facebook and Apple executive and Shawn Fanning, the co-founder of Napster. Path works much like any other social website. You get to sign up to the service, find your friends by entering their e-mail address or mobile phone numbers. Once you’re aboard the service and having fun you’ll be able to share photos, limit who can see which photo or view your friends’ location on a map of the world.
If you’re not very interested in receiving updates for one of the 50 people you’re allowed to add, you can just “pause” that person and the notifications will stop. I don’t know what to say about this new personal network right now. It does sound like a good idea and the talent behind this new project clearly can’t be denied. Most people were complaining about how Facebook isn’t respectful enough for their privacy and how they should choose whom they share information with. That’s why a team of students were working on Diaspora, a social networking site that in some way was supposed to be what Path is now. The creators of Path promise that apps for Android and Blackberry will become available soon. Meanwhile iPhone users should definitely give the service a try. Who knows, it might soon become the next Facebook, or even better than that. There are lots of shy people who would very much prefer to maintain a close friendship with 5-6 people on this type of network rather than be flooded with friend invites on Facebook all the time. Those people might find Path especially attractive. What do you think about Path so far? Do you think it’s a good idea to limit a friends’ list to 50 members?
