Path has been blazing a new trail for itself since the launch of Path 2.0, a visually stunning and accessible new take on the quantity over quality social network. A makeover that has reportedly paid off.
CEO and co-founder Dave Morin tells TechCrunch that Path users are sharing at a rate of 12 moments per second, and the number of active users continues to climb. That number was 10,000 two weeks ago—it’s now 300,000. And while Morin wouldn’t confirm it, the app is apparently being downloaded 100,000 times a day.
That’s pretty astounding for a company that seemed dead in the water. Since its refusal to sell to Google last year, the Path team has been working on this new iteration to replace the old version, which was photo-focused and somewhat clunky. Now, it’s a seamless, beautiful social journal. And despite its very threatening competition in the social app market, people seemed to be buying what Path is selling.
The app will also be pocketing sister app With. With was a rather elementary app that simply proclaimed who you were… well, with. Now Path will absorb With, “After a long and friendly coexistence, two apps have become one. And the pair has settled on a name: Path 2.” Without much warning for its dedicated users (of which we don’t know too many), With will wind down and we assume its functions will be rolled into Path.
It’s a good decision on Path’s part. Seeing bits and pieces of social networking functions spread out in a host of different applications (especially when they are under the same development roof) can be just plain frustrating. And of course, anything that’s going to better round out Path, with its growing user base and newfound fanaticism, is welcome.
The two apps also had far too similar concepts, and that overlap is exactly what isolates your own users. So while we’re sure those who use With on its own aren’t thrilled to see it go, the fact that its niche is filled by a variety of other services makes it a fairly unsentimental goodbye.
Will Path dethrone Facebook? No, but we’d say every other platform in this space should feel a little nervous.
