Cold Start, Spam or Just Enough? The Path Dilemma.
So everyone's pissed at Path it seems. Well, everyone in our little bubble. My dad uses Path, he doesn't care that you are saving his address book for him. He just wants to know how I've been.
What happens here is quite ironic though. This one feature we are up in arms about is the one feature that actually makes Path work. It's quite brilliant and helpful actually.Facebook figured out that you need to be friends with ten people before you were hooked. They built a team around it.They also started with your college email address. A close enough graph that was searchable. Then the flood gates happened after they opened it to everyone. Hence the Facebook problem, too many friends.If Path, like everyone else, used Facebook to find your friends the entire model would have been broken. Facebook isn't friends.Let's take a look at why this functionality is so important.Early adopters join. They are the over sharers, the friend request people, etc. They create and curate. They don't have a cold start problem. My dad does. He's timid to share and even more timid to friend.So, I join Path and add enough people to make me happy. My dad joins and he's scared to add anyone. My address book provides a notification to me that isn't like all these other apps that spam me because of Facebook. Signal to noise is lost and I quit. Thus, it tells me to add my dad as a friend and not the latter. The people on the system need to help the new people get value from the system. The magic is making the new user, my dad, feel welcome without him having to ask for friends. They come to him. Magic. But it has to be people I care about, just enough. It grows from there. Ala the phone book.It's the psychology of why this thing works. People need to feel welcome and wanted. Path nails this in every aspect of their product. It's all about feedback. You do something, feedback, do something, feedback... It's great product design and they have some of the best.
Progress -> Feedback -> Repeat
This is the best way to create a first user experience that makes every person joining Path feel welcome. You join and people want to be friends with you. Close friends. Magic. Without this first user experience, a wasteland would ensue.
When we built Gist, we ranked your contacts by source and it makes sense that phone number is weighted higher than the others.
So the dilemma. Don't pull your address book and you'll be lonely without feedback on your pretty picture or use Facebook and you'll be just that. Facebook but prettier.I'll take Path as it was, is. Its brought our company, our friends and our team closer together. Sometimes too close, but that's the point. If you think you own your contacts in the first place then you're silly, we've been stealing them to the cloud for years. The internet, if used malicously, would probably screw us all. This feature benefits us all. Me as a user and Path as a company.Your contacts should be the least of your worries, you can find them all in your permanetely saved contact book of the world, Facebook.
I'll take the Path way, just enough.
