Yesterday it suddenly occured to me, a lot of tweets of youngsters were about the social network Path. After a little bit of research I figured it out. This week a huge hype emerged regarding the application Path. There is an immense growth going on as to acceptances among young people, as it would be 'the new Twitter or Facebook'. Last monday they transcribed the 10 million users.
What is Path?
Path is a social app which is actually a kind of combination of many features that you find on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This allows you to post status updates, share photos provided with a filter, share what music you listen to, chat and much more. Where Path distinguishes itself by is that you only can have 150 friends and therefore primarily involves sharing your life with your closest friends.
Path has been popular in the U.S. for months now, especially in high schools, and now the Dutch youth seem to like the app aswell. What's remarkable is that the app already exists from November 2010 and was mainly used by fanatic Path fans who value the small and intimitate aspect of the social network. The sudden hype therefore leads to annoyance with the early adopters among the Path-users. But how did the hype exactly arise so suddenly?
Path has been popular in the U.S. for months now, especially in high schools, and now the Dutch youth seem to like the app aswell. What's remarkable is that the app already exists from November 2010 and was mainly used by fanatic Path fans who value the small and intimitate aspect of the social network. The sudden hype therefore leads to annoyance with the early adopters among the Path-users. But how did the hype exactly arise so suddenly?
The cause of the hype
The cause of the sudden popularity of the app is caused by Path itself, but not in a fair way. What Path does after you sign up, is sending an SMS to all the contacts in your address book with an invitation to download the app and with the message that you really need to look at those great pictures that you apparently just have uploaded. The app also automatically sends an invitation to all your friends via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Because of the hype this was so disturbing for Facebook users, that Facebook deleted the app from its site. This shouldn't be possible and it's even illegal to save and contact someones contacts without permission.
In February 2012 Path had already been fined with $ 800,000 for this. For this reason they then added the option to give or refuse permission to save and use your contacts. The annoying thing is that the option of giving permission to spread messages in your name is automatically checked by Path. If you don't want Path to use any of your contacts you should still uncheck the option to make sure it doesn't spam your friends.
In February 2012 Path had already been fined with $ 800,000 for this. For this reason they then added the option to give or refuse permission to save and use your contacts. The annoying thing is that the option of giving permission to spread messages in your name is automatically checked by Path. If you don't want Path to use any of your contacts you should still uncheck the option to make sure it doesn't spam your friends.
From intimate network to mass hype
Due to the unsolicited text messages and invitations via social media Path has made itself immensively popular and the intimate social network has become a huge hype among the youth mass. This is not appreciated by the youth who were using the network for much longer. Where Path first stood for privacy and intimacy and was to place to share your experiences with an intimitate group of friends, it now seems to become another one of those 'next facebooks'.
How long the hype will last is unclear, but what is clear is that this social network doesn't owe it's popularity by guaranteeing it's values: privacy and intimacy.
How long the hype will last is unclear, but what is clear is that this social network doesn't owe it's popularity by guaranteeing it's values: privacy and intimacy.
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