Dear @Path – an open letter

Dear Path team

According to my Path profile, I have been a Path user for 2 years and have shared a mere 833 moments. I’ve been thinking about Path quite a bit in the last few months and why it stands out as a better social sharing option, in theory.

I have a couple friends on Path who use it with varying degrees of frequency. Unfortunately most of my close friends and family don’t use Path because they already use Facebook which is a pretty compelling option simply because everyone else is using it. You’re probably pretty familiar with this one.

Anyway, my Path friends and I have been chatting on and off about Path and how much we’d like more of our friends and family to start using it so it becomes even more worthwhile. That is essentially the way we measure Path’s value, for the most part. After all, if you share something on Path and no-one sees it, does the tree make a noise when it falls to the forest floor (well, you know what I mean)?

Another nagging worry is whether Path is going to be around in the months and years ahead? Path works so well as a sort of shared life journal, it would be such a shame to invest time and moments in our Path streams (what do we call them? Paths?) only to receive an email one day from Mr Morin telling us that doors are being closed, lights turned off and data exported because other people just walked a different social path (pun intended).

You see, you just don’t talk much about how many people are using Path or whether you’re seeing encouraging usage or engagement trends? Sure, the number of Path users is largely irrelevant because all that counts is whether our connections are using Path but if enough people are signing up and using Path, that must trigger the network effect at some point and even more people will jump on board, perhaps even more of my friends and family members? Heck, maybe my wife will even return to Path and use it now and then.

So what’s going on, Path people? Are we on the right track here? Is our social conveyance fuelled and humming along at a sustainable pace? Are you cooking up some cool enhancements and improvements that will make Path even more compelling to everyone else or should we still keep our Facebook profiles current … you know, just in case?

Hopefully you are all really busy helping users and stuff so I understand if it takes a little time to get back to me but a little kimono-opening would go a long way towards reassuring our little group of South African (geographical and by birth) Path fans and users.

Paul