Where is the private social future?

When Instagram was bought by Facebook, it also showed the world its true value: 1 billion. As a prestigious and unique image-sharing community, the Instagram of a huge user base is really worth the money. And in the later micro-letter also added to the picture diary function, which is undoubtedly a successful endorsement for Instagram.

And Path, another star that rises almost in the same period, what is its future?

In 2010 in October, Instagram officially released, they only spent two months, let the number of users reached 1 million. In November of the same year, the path was quietly launched. Also as a picture-sharing software, Path was obviously more primitive at first than Instagram, and it doesn't support filters, with a maximum of 50 friends, emphasizing a more intimate social, rather than a Web site with the beauty of discovering the world or sharing the vision of a user. Since path was slow in its early stages, it was thought to be one of Silicon Valley's flash-forward startups, but thanks to the launch of Path 2.0, the number of subscribers has increased significantly later.

If you look at the macro level, now Path 2.0 is more like a Instagram: users can share more than just photos, or photos with filters. They can also share where they are, who they are with, what they want to say, the songs they're listening to, even their own sleep and early morning. In short, Instagram is sharing the world in your eyes, and Path is more about documenting your journey, as its name is. But they still have a significant difference: there is no public area in the Path, like the Instagram photo wall, that lets you find friends. Your friends can only be found in your social networks, contacts and other existing lists of social relationships to ensure "private".

Path in the main interface and interactive design, also very unique, used to add new content button is pressed, in each child button pop-up will also be accompanied by a playful animation, and for the display of the content of the timeline is also designed to be simple and friendly, intuitive but without losing charm. What's more interesting is how Path displays the time label for each event: when you slide on the timeline, a tiny pop-up tag appears on the right side of the screen, not only to specify the date of the event, but also to slide the virtual clock around it. It makes people feel as if they are traveling in the long river of time. Of course, such excellent interaction design has also attracted the attention of many domestic application teams, some application teams have quickly added several themes to the Path of color different skin.

But the key question that the Path really needs to answer is how much public demand for "private social" is there? What is the perfect combination of private and social concepts that seem to be antagonistic? Merlyn apparently has a set of ideas. Maureen, who has previously worked for Facebook, has witnessed a number of queries and attacks on Facebook's privacy issues, which may be a big reason for Path's desire for "private networking": Maureen wants to do what Facebook can't do. Unlike other social networking site friends, Path 2.0 while expanding the number of friends online to 150 people, the restrictions still exist, because Merlyn learned from Professor Durbar at Oxford University that people can only maintain stable social relationships with about 150 people, 50 of whom are trusted friends, 15 Good friends, 5 best friends. Allowing only 150 intimate friends is a foundation for creating high-quality social networks.

Regardless of the current number of users in the path or its outstanding application performance, path is now following its own established path, but path is still facing a very large dilemma, as we have just mentioned: "Path to do what Facebook can not do?" Facebook has abandoned its earlier strategic plan not to focus on mobile apps, and is now buying Instagram, a mature photo community, which even the Path has been trying to advertise as "private social" Facebook can also be made available to users through the existing information browsing rights control feature. Path in most people's eyes but the implementation of a cool application interface, as well as a Facebook timeline of the functional subset, hard to say is only a good travel log program.

Where will the future of Path be? It is not yet clear that Facebook appears to be temporarily not planning to recall its former associates, but that it was rejected by the company in a few months after the path was launched with 100 million plus a 25 million dollar based on financial performance. Later, in an interview with founder Sarahlacy of technology blogger PandoDaily, Maureen explained the true vision of path: "If Facebook is a town, then path is like a family." They belong to different social networks, but they are essential. ”

Maureen's idea is that the value of Path is to provide a family-like warmth to the user, rather than the hustle and bustle of Facebook.