Path: The Social Tool We've Been Waiting For

The ways in which we share our lives via social platforms are varied and evolving.  On any given day you may check in on Foursquare, update your Facebook and Twitter accounts, post on LinkedIn and then maybe update your Twitter account again. You show your sentiment via “Likes” and “+1s.” And, of course, you subscribe to your friend’s Facebook, Blog, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Twitter, Digg, Myspace, Flickr, YouTube, and Tumblr feeds. You may post once a month, once a week, or multiple times a day. Either way, your fans, followers, friends, and readers enjoy a steady stream of your life via these platforms.

In this landscape, the concern of privacy rears its head again and again. How can socially active users effectively and efficiently monitor their updates, connections, and subscriptions? Issues present themselves like preventing your mom from seeing a Facebook album  from a crazy night out on the town and hiding your Justin Bieber playlist from your buddies on Spotify.

Enter Path, a mobile platform that allows you to share only with the people that matter most. It was first created in November 2010 as a photo sharing service with little differentiation from Flickr. However, Path2 launched a year later and since then, it has garnered more than 7,000 reviews and a 4.5 out of 5 star rating in the iPhone app store.

Users can post to all of their networks in one fell swoop. But here’s the kicker: they can only share their “Path” with 150 of their closest friends and family members.

Functionality includes sharing and editing photos, tagging, check-ins, music posts, and even includes something called “go to sleep,” the equivalent of putting up a “Do Not Disturb” sign. Users can use any combination of the features noted above within the Path platform. Or, they can send them to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Foursquare via full account integration. A users’ network can comment on Path actions with preset emoticons or text.

The interface is gorgeous, yet functional, similar to the browser version of Facebook Timeline, but optimized for mobile devices.

Path refers to itself as a “smart journal” that goes wherever you go and allows you to share how you want, when you want. It is the sentiment Google+ tried to achieve with social circles, but Path simplifies it with just a single, personal network.

Path is currently monetizing their venture through in-app purchases of photo filters and commissions on downloaded songs. Though this revenue stream is too small to turn a profit anytime soon, founder Dave Morin (formerly a Facebook developer), comments that it’s important to condition users early on that some features will come with a cost.

Path’s website claims to have nearly a million users. However, after some initial research, there doesn’t seem to be very many early adopters.  Still, with the information overload on Facebook, I can appreciate the appeal of a scaled down, back-to-basics approach to social sharing. This unique platform will simply need a surge of new users to reach a point of relevance.