9. Prediction -- Fail
At Path we believe in what I call building a
"slow company." Similar to the slow food
movement, we believe that more Internet and
technology companies should look at building
long-term, sustainable, organic growth
companies. Not enough entrepreneurs are
focused on the long term right now. And by long
term I mean, the building of the next generation
of great, high quality brands -- Dave Morin
“The big do not always eat the little. The fast always eat the slow.”
Mr. von Kuenheim, Chairman, BMW 1989
Editor's Notes
Launched in November of 2010, Path has grown to include 6 million people sharing life with close friends and family all over the world. Path is rated as 5-star on the apple store.
Path is the personal social network where you can share life with close friends and family.Reflects a similar platform and functionality as Facebook Timeline,however the app is not designed for mass, public sharing. PersonalPath is a social media app designed for smaller, closer groups of friends. With a friend cap of 150 people on Path, you are only encouraged to connect with the people you trust and know very well.With some additional features that I will cover in the next few slides
Similar to facebook:Profile Photo & Cover Photo, Friends, Update Taking photos/filters☆ Check in to locations with friends.☆ Share the music you're listening to, movies you're watching, and books you're reading.☆ 5 emotions to interact with your friends' activity: Smile, Laugh, Gasp, Frown at or Love their moments.☆ Tell your friends when you're awake and asleep.☆ 'Seen-its' show you who has viewed your moments and who has visited your Path.☆ One tap cross-posting to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare directly from Path.☆ Share your Nike+ FuelBand activity graphs and Nike+ Running maps.☆ Private by default - no one can see your Path activity unless you accept them as a friend.Smart Journal:Or, if you travel to a new city, Path will let your loved ones know by posting a Travel Moment. Path is a journal that writes itself. If you don’t want this feature, you can also turn it off.
The secret sauce is that path realized that we all have overcrowded, overfriended social networks.And that we have mass groups of associates and people we met once and people we work with and people we used to know.We don’t have tight circles of our closestfriends and families represented in the online world.Problems:Very few people categorizetheir friends into groups on FacebookVery few people post their status update to a specific group on FacebookFacebook is public by default, whereas Path is private by default.
Before Path 3, path 2 is famous for its user experience design.Path 2 joins other apps following a fairly recent trend in replacing the traditional iOS navigation at the bottom of the screen with a button in the upper left that slides the whole page of content to the right, revealing a navigation list below.Some people who are in favor of Path claims that their Facebook experience is a "barrage of whatever can be crammed into a single newsfeed." His Twitter experience is "a stream of extremely useful and extremely random information. Instagram is just a bunch of good-looking photos comprised of inconsistent content.
In the FAQ on path.com:Facebook is primarily for sharing with all of your friends and acquaintances, and Twitter is typically a platform for public sharing.Path gives you a friend group tighter than facebook and twitterPath – 6 million usersTwitter – 500 million users > 200 million active usersFacebook – 1 billion users, 680 million mobile phone users > 50 million pages, and 10 million appshttp://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/
In February last year, it was discovered that Path stored users’ address books without their permission. The company apologized and changed its software.Pathis not profitable, plans to sell a premium version of its app to gain profits.CEOMorin rejected a $100-million buyout offer from Google shortly after he launched Path. Google wanted Path’s excellent UI team at the time.Tech crunch article:There was one term of the offer that was the breaking point—basically Google could fire Morin at any point. Either a month after a deal or a year. Also Google gave no guarantee as to what Morin’s title and position would be at Google.The $100 million deal involved $25 million upfront and some sort of $75 million plus earnout offer. “ “Slow is great, but only if you have revenues. Especially in such a competitive world of social networking. “The big do not always eat the little. The fast always eat the slow.” Mr. von Kuenheim, Chairman, BMW 1989Therefore, I don’t think it will succeed.
