Following a More Private Path

Image: Path.com

An iPhone app being introduced today could almost be considered the anti-Facebook.

That’s because if Facebook, which just passed eBay as the third-most-valuable Internet company, is about gathering as many friends as you can, then Path could be described as choosing your friends wisely. It’s sort of the difference between throwing a giant party and chitchatting with as many people as you can and having a quiet dinner with close friends. While on Facebook, you can have as many “friends” as you want. On Path, 50 is the limit.

The founders of Path—David Morin, a veteran of Facebook and Apple, and Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster—say they’re not trying to compete with Facebook. They’re trying to augment it by allowing users to choose a closer circle of friends and perhaps share more intimate details of their life on the Path network than in the broader confines of Facebook. For now, the service is available only as an iPhone app, but it's expected to expand in the future.

Here’s how it works, according to the Path blog:

Path allows you to capture your life’s most personal moments and share them with the 50 close friends and family in your life who matter most. Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself. Simply take a photo with your camera on iPhone or iPod Touch and add context around that moment in the form of tags for people, places, and things. These tags provide three types of context which we think help capture a moment.

Morin, the new company's CEO, sees it this way, "You usually have about five people whom you trust most, 20 whom you consider your BFFs that you hang out with all the time and about 50 or so who are your personal network. Path is built for that."

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