Late For Tea » Path, A Short Review

Path, A Short Review

Recently, I saw an ad on Daring Fireball for a new social network - Path. Here are my thoughts on it.

Originally, after seeing the ad, I checked out the website, and put it into my look-at-later pile, until one of my friends posted a twitter update via Path. Once it was back on my radar, I signed up for my account and downloaded the application to my iPhone.

Path is very mobile-centric, which is very relevant today. It’s referred to as a “smart” journal, designed to help you keep track of memorable moments in your life. Once installed on your phone, it can track your day and routine, helping you to capture meaningful events. Accounts are limited to 150 friends, which is explained as limiting the sharing of these moments to the most important people in your life.

The signup process via the browser was still very straightforward, but only your settings are available via the web. The first thing I did, was try to change my profile picture, which I confused with my “Cover” at first. Path actually has TWO images that represent you. A small circular avatar, as well as a more broad “cover”, which serves as a backdrop. It doesn’t appear that there’s any way to change your profile picture from your desktop at this time, however, It is possible to change your vital stats and password. There’s also a section with links to remove any connected services, such as Facebook or Twitter, but again, no links to add them.

Path web interface

Switching to my phone, my first impression is that the application is beautiful. Everything is smooth, fast and good looking. When you create a new post, you’re given 6 options: Photograph, People, Place, Music, Thought and Awake. Each contains a slightly customized screen with information that you’d want to share about a particular media.

Personally, I can see myself switching to path for many of my posts to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare. The ability to easily filter where information is cross-posted makes it easy to track events and control who can see them, more easily tailoring them to the appropriate audience. You can read more about Path on their story page, and more about how it differs from other networks.

I was most impressed by the music post screen. It gives you an option for the song currently playing in the iPod app, or a selection of recommended music, which is probably a feed of other recently posted music by other users.

From many of the post screens, you can select a location as well as the people that you are with. The people appear to be limited by your address book, rather than your Path friends.

I was least impressed with the Awake post type, as it’s only use is to indicate your waking state, which isn’t very applicable for me. I’m going to try out out, but it feels like you’d be spamming the feed, unless you were using it to indicate a nap, or being awake at a strange time, neither of which I really do.

Also available are a series of selectors to syndicate your post to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or Foursquare. I’d like to see WordPress integration, as I don’t have a Tumblr blog and I’d really like to be able to syndicate things like my music posts. I can, however, understand the difficulties of WordPress and self hosted blogs, compared to a pretty Tumblr API.

When it comes to reading updates, the application uses a beautiful timeline. It’s able to display all types of media posted using the application, and has a variety of easy to understand icons while you’re skimming though. Again, the music sharing interface shines though here. When you select a song that’s been shared, a window pops up with links to purchase the song, or display further information. My one gripe is that a preview starts playing immediately, which may be inappropriate for some situations. Largely though, when clicking on a shared song, you’ll want to hear what it sounds like.