"Pathgatory"
Some smart thoughts on the new Path by Hunter Walk (full disclosure: a good enough friend of mine to be a Path friend).
A great point on the “seen” numbers:
Lots of the P2 design choices are wonderful and detailed. The one I totally disagree with is making “view by #” a default piece of metadata. Seeing high #s on my friends’ posts (because they’ve accepted more friend requests) is subtle pressure for me to friend more people as well to establish my credibility within the ecosystem. Path has focused on creating value in its feature, not via game mechanics and this is the one inconsistent decision. My solution would be to record that data and make it visible only to the post’s author in their own view. That way i can see which of my posts had the most interaction relative to the size of my own graph.
That’s one element of Path that seems to go against its core strength as a tighter network. Walk’s solution is a good one, I think.
Related: a week ago, Josh Constine also wrote about Path’s unique social dynamic:
The maximum sharing volume likely comes with a friend count of between 3 and 5. As you hit 15, 40, or 100, you’ll censor yourself more, and find less reason to use Path in addition to other services.
That means you have to undertake the socially awkward experience of rejecting requests from your co-workers, acquaintances, and fellow early adopters, and make sure not to put them in the same position. You may have already let some loose acquaintances into your inner circle or have outstanding requests from Path 1, and will need to go in and remove them.
I was coming dangerously close to the 150 limit when I went in yesterday and removed some people. I don’t mean this to be an insult, of course, but rather a reality check. Am I really that close with you? Should we actually be connected here?
I cut about 15 connections. I plan to do more. But it’s hard. It really does go against everything we’ve been taught about social networks the past 5 years. That’s not a bad thing by any means. It’s just different.
