Do you find yourself paparazzi shy and in need of a tiny bubble where you can have your own private gallery? Then this Apple app might just be for you. It’s the elite version of mobile photo sharing, allowing you a close and intimate network with 50 as the maximum. The app was named ‘Path’, but it does not really open you paths to widening your contacts database as much as Facebook does.
Napster maker Shawn Fanning co-owns with an ex-Facebook employee named David Morin in creating this new app for iPhones. The app was called ‘Path’. Morin left Facebook early this January to create this app with Napster, leaving his position as one of the crucial developers of Facebook. Facebook continues to make waves in the social media market at about $41 million net worth. Morin was the also one of the co-inventors of Facebook Connect, which is not up in action and widely in use.
Path’s blog continues to market the app as the safest place on earth for you and your photos. “Path is a place where you can be yourself…in the form of tags for people, places, and things. These tags provide three types of context which we think help capture a moment.”
Initial reports of Path in February early this year from websites such as Portfolio only surmised that the app will be making a sort of list producing effect for a network. They did hit the nail in the head by discovering that it was for a personal network and not as public as Facebook. It was only late this month that the actual use of Path was divulged for the technological public.
Morin believes that this platform of limited network sharing of photos can help people gain access and give access to photos that they genuinely want, as opposed to being unwelcomely tagged by other people in your Facebook posts. Also, it provides another dimension of options to mobile photo sharing. Often, Facebook leaves little to be done for Facebook photos uploadedfrom a mobile phone; these said photos can only be found dumped in a single folder entitled Mobile Uploads.
Although reports seem to state that Path seems to be a Facebook enemy or competitor, Morin views it more as a way to augment the existing social media scene. For them, the Facebook app is for your overall network and Path is for your BFF’s or your bestfriends. Sharing is the same as in Twitter; it’s not symmetrical so there is no need to reciprocate sharing capabilities to each other.
Take a peek at Path’s interface, courtesy of Apple’s website:
Even if it already serves to cater to the common privacy issues in the huge network of Facebook, the app might not make it in the atttempts to get a segment of Facebook’s market. Most people in the tech world find the effort a little bit too belated for users to actually care. But then again, the limited functionality of mobile sharing of photos might just up the sales a little bit. It still is promising despite the lack of Oomph factor that will push it to skyrocketing sales or patronage.
November 19th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
[...] Gizmosync [...]