Tive's Take

Does Path 2 undermine the social network’s allure?

Path released an update yesterday that allows you to post your ‘thoughts’, what you’re listening to and whether you are awake or asleep on top of previous functionality - location and who you are with as part of a photo. There is also a complete design overhaul. It’s a big update for Path who have been suspiciously quiet for quite some time. But does widening its product offering and positioning itself as a “Private Personal Journal” help the niche social network?

Disclaimer: I’m a big fan and advocate of Path. I’ve converted a number of friend to the niche social network, one of whom refuses to join Facebook, so I’m keen to see Path succeed. My online world is no different to anyone else’s - it is split into two spheres:

- friends and family I know and love

- friends and family and work colleagues and twitter followers I don’t know very well or love. (We have Facebook to blame for allowing us to categorise some people we don’t know or love as friends).

For me the latter class sit across a number of social network but most importantly, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and Foursquare. Meanwhile the former class, sit across all of these but also Path. In short, Path is just for my close family and friends. You can have up to 150 connections on Path (formerly 50). I only have 14. I curate my Path viciously. I don’t connect with anyone whose updates I don’t want to see. This, combined with the fact that Path only lets you post photos - real life occurrences - means whenever I get a Path notification I get excited. I look forward to seeing a photo someone I love has posted - seeing what they’re up to. I cannot say the same for any other social network. This is the power of Path. Excitement through relevance.

Path 2 introduces a fistful of new features. And I’m concerned that the diversity of these features are exactly the sort of thing that turns off many Facebook users and will have the same impact on Pathers. 

Instagram’s success has been simplicity and single-mindedness. Its phenomenal recent growth (10m users in the last year) is testament to its proposition - photographs and only photographs. When users enter a niche social network they know they’ll only be exposed to one genre of content. Whether it is Instagram, Pinterest, turntable.fm, Miso, Foodspotting they are choosing to see one thing they know and love.

Path 2 has moved into territory that emulates other major social networks (your new timeline even looks like Facebook’s Timeline). The introduction of text status updates, location checkins (combined with Foursquare checkins), music checkins (with the ability to play the track in-app), companionship updates (previously launched as niche network With), and what I can only describe as state-of-consciousness updates, all show that Path is following its original remit of being the intimate social network by getting more diverse updates from your closest friends. 

But even your closest friends can be boring when you give them the ability to tell you they are now asleep. “It’s about staying in someone’s life every single day,” says [Path founder] Morin. “That’s love.” That may be true for my wife. But for everyone else, that’s annoying.

If my connections on Path start telling me where they are, or that they are awake, will I remain excited whenever I get a notification from Path? I doubt it. And if Path holds no allure, then it’s just a Facebook group or G+ circle made up of my closest friends. And that could make it redundant.