The mobile-only social network that limits you to 150
friends rolled out version three of its app yesterday. It adds several new
features, like stickers you can use in conversation, private location sharing,
and private messaging. Some of them are quite good, others are boring, and at
least one — messaging — is a privacy disaster.
Path’s best feature is it respects your
privacy. It’s intimate, and encourages a level of personal sharing in a
way rarely seen on Facebook anymore. You can see everyone who viewed your
updates. It’s basically impossible to surreptitiously stalk someone. You can’t
re-share photos (without taking a screenshot). In its values statement,
the company notes, “Path should be private by default. Forever. You should
always be in control of your information and experience.” This latest update,
sadly, breaks that intimacy.
The new messaging feature lets you send one-to-one or
group messages. Before, you could only post updates to Path that everyone
connected to you could see. Messaging is great, it’s a nice feature. But it
screws up, badly, by letting you send messages to people you aren’t friends
with. Worse, there’s no way to opt-out of receiving messages. And worst of all,
you can use the Search function to find anyone you have a second-degree
connection to.
I used the Search feature to find and message Dave
Morin, Path’s founder. (He’s not a friend, but I searched for Morin and there
he was, twice.) I sent him a message to ask why the new version allowed me to
message people who weren’t my friends. His response was that it is “only
friends of friends.” That would be great, if I were friends with all of my
friends’ friends. I’m not. And I already have a place for that kind of
interaction — it’s called Facebook.
I wanted to see who else I could message, and it turns
out, I’m connected to quite a few Path founders and funders, like Shawn
Fanning, whom you may know better by his old internet handle that he also used
as a company name, Napster. I resisted the urge to ask what he was listening
to. But by far the worst thing about searching is that you don’t have to know
who you are looking for. Hit the letter A and then search, and you’ll get a
list of everyone you can message whose first or last name starts with A. Hi,
Andrew Anker! How is your new startup going? You can do the same with B, C, and
so forth until the bitter end. (Sadly, it appears that either Mark Zuckerberg
is not on Path, or at least is not a friend of a friend.) Most people don’t
need yet another avenue where strangers can message them. Furthermore, people
may not even want others knowing they’re using the service at all.
Critique:
Has messaging feature in social media apps is very nice in my opinion. But does path think it still on their goals to make their apps is the real-150 friend-apps. It even allow people to send message to people they don't really know. Yes it may be the friend of our friend, but that is not our real friend in real world. This is just dumb.
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