jeanette

After 2 weeks and 120 “moments”, I’m in love with the Path 2 app.  I was in love after the first moment, but I’m continuing to enjoy it.  It’s gorgeous and using it makes my soul happy.  I’ve been a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Gowalla user over the last few years, and I think Path does it better than all of them for what I need.

I’ve always had a deep need to journal everything I do (more soul happiness happens when I do), but I’m not a very public person, so I find myself using the apps with public posts less and less.  And shockingly enough, no one except close family members really care about the finer details of my life.

Facebook has been a good way to stay or get back in touch with a lot of old friends, family members, and coworkers, but it’s not a place I update a lot anymore.  The app’s interface keeps getting better, but it’s still too cluttered for my taste, and the iPhone app has always been quirky.  I still read Facebook, but I’ve been close to deleting my account many times, although I doubt that will ever really happen.

Instagram was great for a little while, but I was mostly looking at pictures taken by people I didn’t know, and that wasn’t fun for me.  It didn’t last long.

I loved Gowalla.  It looked great, and the checkins and badges were fun, but it ran pretty slowly, and the last redesign made it too heavy.  I stopped using it before the buyout.

Twitter has always been my favorite.  The ability to follow people, places, and things I am interested in in such a casual way still fascinates me.  I plan on continuing to use it often, but I find myself limiting what I tweet now that I’m using my public account.  

The best times on Twitter were on my private account with only a small group of people, mostly family members, following me.  We were having conversations amongst ourselves, getting to know what our daily lives were like in a way we never would have while talking to each other at family functions.

I still only have a small group of followers on my public account, but I feel I need to not advertise how boring I really am, even though I want to.  I really do want to document the sandwich I ate for lunch, share a picture of it, tell you where I got it, and who was with me while I ate it, but I am apparently incapable of “tweet[ing] like I have no followers”, as they say.  

Enter Path.

Path has given me that private family conversation back, and it’s a better experience.

Some reasons why:

• Can’t say it enough, the app is gorgeous.
• I don’t have to go to a different app to check in or take nice pictures and videos.
• Everything is inline with the feed.  I don’t have to click a link to see my friends’ pictures or even videos.
• It’s purpose is to do exactly what I love most about social apps.  It’s “the smart journal that helps you share your life with the ones you love.”
• The checkins are super fast and short and sweet.  I don’t think I’ll have to stick around a place just waiting for the app to update so that I can check in.

Sure, it has bugs, but as a web developer, I can be forgiving, and they’re not intrusive.

The only feature I could do without is how it keeps track of who has viewed your posts and vice versa.  It reminds me of people who ask to get an automatic notification when you’ve read their emails.  It’s not necessary or useful.

But overall, I’m loving Path 2, and I hope it’s sustainable and they can stick around for a while.