Social media can connect you to a huge amount of people, but what if you don’t want to go with quality over quantity?
I’ve been picking up a certain skepticism in the zeitgeist recently, critical of the validity behind putting too much faith in the pull of social media. This line of thinking has sparked a demand for solid measurement of social media ROI to replace exaggerated enthusiasm for likes and a copious but nebulous fan base.
While professional focus is returning to the bottom line, users are experiencing a similar shedding of illusions about just how ‘connected’ having a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, etc account makes them.
Where does Path come into it?
Enter the man who saw the niche for a network that highlights quality rather than quantity. Based on psychological principles about natural limits on connectivity and social relationships, Dave Morin conceived Path. The latest addition to the social media market, Path restricts the connections a user can have to 150, corresponding to research stating that this is the maximum number of meaningful relationships a person can maintain in real life.
The mobile-only (iOS and Android) app’s stated purpose is to fill a vacancy in the market in translating our closest relationships and communications onto a convenient platform that mimics the familiarity and intimacy of real world interactions. It seems to have hit a note with Facebook users sick of seeing pictures of the cat owned by that girl they once knew in college, and children they’ve never met, plastered over their social spaces alongside snapshots of someone’s breakfast muffin. Path has seen exponential growth, beginning in Spanish-speaking Central and South America before capitalising on the English-speaking world. It passed the 10 million user mark early this month, and has been on the rise since at a rate of 1 million users per week.
How does it match up?
In the wake of such illustrious buzz, I found a square in the homepage of my smartphone as yet unfilled by an app – whether that denotes a free niche, I’m not so sure – and set out on my own ‘path’. After indiscriminately mining my contacts from all networks to quickly max out my 150-friend limit, Path failed to impress me as offering anything that an easily manageable combination of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram doesn’t do already.
For all the hype, Path is hardly the social revolution it claims to be, nor does it herald a ‘renaissance’ for messaging. Rather, it seems to cherry-pick features from all the existing social platforms and bundle them into a smart interface which takes the best elements of its competitors’ anatomies while adding nothing original. The landing page is reminiscent of Google+, showing posts along a timeline that echoes Facebook, featuring ‘stickers’ similar to Whatsapp images, and accessed via an icon bearing resemblance to Pinterest.
Whether a scaffold of borrowed gimmickry is the best foundation for the ‘deeper relationships’ that Path is trying to forge is a question that the market will eventually answer.
This blog was written by Laura.
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