
The Last Goodbye - lerigner
https://path.com/goodbye
======
tosh
Path in its day was way ahead in ux and detail compared to other social
networks. Stickers and reactions on facebook came later and even then/now
never were as 'finished' compared to what Path had.

A great example of how the better product doesn't always win. There are just
too many factors (like timing and network effects in this case).

~~~
sneak
Path was not better. They got busted repeatedly playing fast and loose with
user privacy, and iirc their bad behavior was the proximate cause of Apple
adding contacts permissions to iOS. Good riddance to these jerks.

[https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-
user-...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-
information-collected-privacy)

~~~
drcongo
Yeah, my memory of Path is that they spammed all my contacts in the first week
of having it installed and then I uninstalled it and never went near it again.

~~~
ulfw
That's exactly how long it stayed installed on my phone and those of my
friends who I helped originally sign up for it.

I don't think they ever recovered from that incident.
[https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-
user-...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-
information-collected-privacy)

I can't believe they somehow trotted along for another six years. Never seen
anybody use it since.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
Hard to find a mobile app these days that doesn't demand contact access, try
using WhatsApp without providing it and it's a rough ride, I'm super reluctant
to upload mine but that one was basically unusable without doing so.

How times change.

~~~
ulfw
That’s very true. Though it wasn’t the contacts upload on its own so much. It
was that they were uploaded in the background without permission or
notification and your contacts were spammed without your permission.

------
MarkMc
Path was very popular in Indonesia when I visited a few years ago. I guess
people just switched to other social networks like Instagram. I wonder whether
people will have moved on from Instagram in 10 years.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
I heavily believe social networks will always be cyclical, as people always
want excitement. A new social network launches, everyone gets excited for
something new and different, it grows to the point where your grandma and your
teachers or kids are on it too, you lose the excitement and start looking for
the next "entertainment".

The world is moving faster than ever with entertainment and attention spans.
Facebook is already showing signs of fizzling out. I don't believe it will
die, just like MySpace and Digg are still going, they're just not the hot shit
they once were. I think we're pretty much hitting the point now where Snapchat
and Instagram are "hotter" than Facebook, and Facebook is running on momentum
for a fair while longer before being "just another social network".

Instagram and Snapchat are in their peak right now. Everyone under 30 has
both, and most over 30 at least have an account to follow their kids, friends,
whatever. I think 10 years is even optimistic, I wouldn't be surprised if
another transition happened within 5.

When Instagram and Snapchat lose their excitement, the next thing will come
along. There's hundreds of startups already working on trying to be the next
big social network. It's a given it'll happen eventually.

(I'm not in the industry and don't know stats, I don't use social networks
other than following people on Twitter for updates, this is just the ramblings
of someone watching it all for 20+ years)

~~~
gt2
You underestimate several things:

\- the difficulty of changing services for the technically challenged.

\- Facebook's technical prowess (much different than MySpace was)

\- Facebook's variety outside of a pure social network (they are a news app,
craiglist/classifieds, meetup/events, Picasa 10.0/photo app, messenger, and a
myspace clone, all rolled into one, with new services added all of the time).
Probably missed something else.

~~~
xbmcuser
Facebook stayed ahead in many ways by buying out it's future competition i.e
Instagram and WhatsApp and tried very hard for snapchat without success so
copied it with instagram. Most people in my extended family no longer post
much on Facebook but are regular and heavy users of WhatsApp groups and
instagram.

------
wishinghand
What did they do? Their home page doesn’t give it away and their about page is
just the farewell letter linked by the OP.

~~~
jey
This provides more context: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/17/rip-
path/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/17/rip-path/)

~~~
arbie
Crazy that they turned down a $100M+ offer from Google in their first year.

~~~
hguhghuff
Hindsight is 20/20.

I remember when zuckerberg turned down $1B from yahoo and I couldn’t believe
how stupid and greedy he must be to turn that down.

~~~
danieltillett
Is his life that much better than if he had taken the money and run? I am a
big believer that the best life is found at the upper, upper middle class
level where you have enough money to do almost everything you want, but where
you can walk down the street without bodyguards.

~~~
cityzen
He didn't want money, he wanted power.

------
robotsquidward
Path has been used by my girlfriends family for the past six years as their
familial social network. They all just follow each other and because they
don't use it for anything else it's a perfect little community for sharing
memories. It was hard for them to cope with the fact that it's all getting
shut down after six years using it.

Makes you wonder why smaller family or close-friends type social networks
don't work. I guess the value isn't there to build it because it can't sprawl
in the same way as other social networks.

~~~
GuiA
_Makes you wonder why smaller family or close-friends type social networks don
't work._

Because they are run by for profit companies, operating in a capitalistic
framework.

That is one of the core pillars of free software as envisioned by Stallman -
software that can truly serve the needs of the people, because it is not
subject to those pressures.

A world where your girlfriend’s family could painlessly deploy their own such
service for just a few users and not have to worry about a company shutting it
down whenever they feel like it would be wonderful.

~~~
pikzel
Yeah, I'm sure they would be able to deploy the service, have it secure and
updated, having apps up to date on their new devices. Or maybe that takes time
and effort, and people need to pay their bills.

~~~
hrktb
I think for people don’t mind paying for things they actualy own.

For instance grand-parents don’t want to pay for instagram but will pay
premium to have great pictures printed and framed.

Or pay to have their own domain name.

People pay for Dropbox or Squarespace.

I’d totally see my parents paying for a Synology if someone could install it
and maintain it for around 10$/€ a month. Currently they pay for one time
install fees + maintenance hours for their windows machine for instance, it’s
not a big stretch.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
Synology is heavily business focused, but I do feel they're making steps
towards competing with the bigger companies by offering smaller scale options.
They now have Chat, Drive, and Moments which all do things like Slack, GDrive,
and Timehop and with apps. Obviously the main caveat is they're not as
refined/full featured.

------
ugochiowo
Remember Ello? The invite only social network that blew up in 2014. I was on
it for a week then I had to say Oodbye as well.

[https://ello.co/](https://ello.co/) [https://www.cnet.com/news/meet-ello-the-
social-network-that-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/meet-ello-the-social-
network-that-wants-to-be-the-anti-facebook/)

~~~
dredmorbius
Ello is still operating, though its social aspect is fading.

The founders' initial plan was to create an artists' and designers' platform,
and they've pivoted hard back in that direction over the past couple of years.

~~~
ugochiowo
Thought their initial pitch was an ad free social network?

~~~
village-idiot
It was. Turns out that’s really hard to do.

~~~
Deimorz
Especially when you take a bunch of venture capital:
[https://ar.al/notes/ello-goodbye/](https://ar.al/notes/ello-goodbye/)

Note that that was written when they had taken $435,000 in VC, and now they're
up to $11M: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ello-
inc](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ello-inc)

~~~
village-idiot
I’m genuinely surprised they’ve lasted this long.

~~~
dredmorbius
And ... it turns out there's just been a management coup.

------
newscracker
It started as a good idea while social networks hadn't yet reached the level
of adoption and engagement that they would later, but getting users to start
using anything new is very difficult. The limit on the number of contacts
(that one could have) may have further impacted the network effect.

It's a bit unfortunate that the first thing that comes to my mind when Path is
mentioned is the address book upload by the app without asking users.

I don't think there's no space for such an app now, since more people
(relatively speaking) are aware of and are concerned about large networks like
Facebook and their impact on privacy and society. Coming back with a privacy
focused offering that targets those who want more meaningful interactions with
a limited number of people might get some traction, even if it remains niche.

~~~
skookumchuck
I'd be interested in a peer-to-peer one, rather than one with a centralized
server and database.

~~~
jarfil
There's Diaspora, since 2010 no less, but it's hard for it to really take off
when most people would rather use a centralized service, and centralized
services would rather lock people in.

------
glibgil
Time to retire either my day or night iPhone

------
ceejayoz
Speaking of dead social networks, [http://peach.cool/](http://peach.cool/) is,
somehow, still up.

~~~
gscott
If it costs almost nothing to run why ever kill it off...

------
prawn

      - 9.17.2018 : Notice on Path service discontinuation
      - 10.1.2018: Unable to download/update the app in iTunes and Google Play
      - 10.18.2018: Termination of the Service (Unable to access to Path)
      - 11.15.2018: Path related customer service will be closed
    

Seems like a fairly abrupt wrap-up of the service?

I remember a friend used it years ago with her partner as a private social
network of sorts which I thought was interesting. Then that was the last I
ever heard of Path until now.

------
daniel_iversen
I’m sure they did lots wrong, including being deceitful with peoples private
address books.. but also, wasn’t one of the novelties of Pty that you could
only have 20 “friends” or something like that? That seems like a huge gamble
and makes it that much harder to build, grow and sustain a network doesn’t it!
;-)

------
__exit__
I remember Path back in college. It was not that popular but its mobile app
was beautiful, top-notch in terms of UI design and animations back then.

Sadly it did not take off, which on the other hand is comprehensible, having
other options such as Facebook and Instagram where most of the friends and
connections are.

------
gesman
Cool domain name though

~~~
simonswords82
The domain is probably the most valuable asset they own following the demise
of the service.

------
tommoor
Never even left beta…

~~~
kacy
I think this was for the web version. They were mobile first for a long time,
and a lot of the core team left years ago before the web version was complete.

------
sytelus
I don’t understand when startups just closes down. Isn’t minimum established
unit of success is aquihire these days?

~~~
skinnymuch
They did get bought out by KakaoTalk.

------
eganist
[mis-stated comment edited out too late to be deleted]

~~~
rajaganesh87
You mean Journey app? It doesn't allow sharing

