Path is a well-enough designed product that I'm certain somewhere along the line someone had to have said, "Well let's automatically select all of their contacts and let them deselect if they don't want them," and then someone else said "let's just keep the 'deselect all' button" the same color as the bar behind it." I'm pretty sure someone on the Path marketing team was OK with the idea that they were going to trick you into inviting all of your contacts.
Yet Path claims to be a social network for close friends and family. If they were really concerned about the overall value of the product and not numbers, shouldn't it be offering up ways to choose the closest people to you instead of hoping you accidentally spam all of your friends? They'll get away with it, but it's a very, very short-sighted move.
I believe they were hoping you would accidentally message every one of your contacts, and actions such as these warrant uninstall by those who have already downloaded the app and refusal to download by those who haven't.
Yet Path claims to be a social network for its close friends and family. Shouldn't it be offering up ways to choose the closest people to you instead of hoping you accidentally spam all of your friends?
Path originally forced you to a friend limit of 100. Needless to say that makes exponential growth more difficult, so the limit was removed and marketing strategies were...changed.
Every subtlety in Path's product is a conscious decision. Of course they intended you to accidentally message all of your contacts - but in this post I was trying to shed light on the the real victims of the spam: other app developers
Yet Path claims to be a social network for close friends and family. If they were really concerned about the overall value of the product and not numbers, shouldn't it be offering up ways to choose the closest people to you instead of hoping you accidentally spam all of your friends? They'll get away with it, but it's a very, very short-sighted move.
I believe they were hoping you would accidentally message every one of your contacts, and actions such as these warrant uninstall by those who have already downloaded the app and refusal to download by those who haven't.