| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | San Francisco, California |
| Founder(s) | Dave Morin Shawn Fanning Dustin Mierau |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Dave Morin Shawn Fanning Dustin Mierau |
| Employees | 22 |
| Website | www.path.com |
| Type of site | Social networking |
| Registration | Required |
| Available in | English |
| Launched | November 2010 |
| Current status | Active |
Path is a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging[1] service for mobile devices, launched in November 2010. The services aims to be a place where users can share with their close friends and family. [2]
Dave Morin, Co-founder and CEO, says: “Our long-term grand vision here is to build a network that is very high quality and that people feel comfortable contributing to at any time.” [2]
Users update their stream on Path by posting photos, adding tags for people, places, and things.[3] Path limits each user's social network to 150 "friends" in order to encourage users to select only high-quality connections,[4] a decision the company says was inspired by psychology research by Robin Dunbar that suggested people have a maximum workable number of social contacts.[5] Morin is specifically focused on one of Robin Dunbar's numbers - the number of people that an individual knows and trusts, like the group you would invite to a birthday party. That number is between 40 and 60. [6]The limitation, along with user controls over how to share each post, were designed to encourage greater sharing of personal information by keeping it private to a person's inner circle of social contacts.[7] The site was intended as a companion to Facebook and other social network platforms, as opposed to a destination website.[8]
Contacts are suggested from among persons in a user's electronic address book, as well as people with whom the user is communicating by email.[9] A user is currently able to publish photos to any other user of the system without confirmation from the receiver of the pictures, and the receiver is not able to delete the user from their list of friends.
The company started out with an iPhone application and website, but is planning to roll out a Blackberry and Android application soon. The company competes with other social networks such as Instagram and PicPlz. [10]
Path recently launched another service, with.me, that allows users to say who they are with, with the option to add a photo and say what they're doing. This app is also currently only available for iOS.
In November 2011, Path relaunched with more features and by December 2011, had grown from 30,000 to over 300,000 members in less than a month.[11]
Based in San Francisco, California, the company was founded by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin.[5] Path's initial $2.5 million funding round[1] included Ron Conway, Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Rose, Marc Benioff, Chris Kelly, and others.[5]