It is with deep regret that we announce that we will stop providing our beloved service, Path.
We started Path in 2010 as a small team of passionate and experienced designers and engineers. Over the years we have tried to lay out our mission: through technology and design we aim to be a source of happiness, meaning, and connection to our users. Along our journey we have laughed and cried with you, and learned valuable lessons. And it is now inevitable to wind down the service to prioritize our work to serve you with better products and services. It has been a long journey and we sincerely thank each one of you for your years of love and support for Path.
The specific shutdown schedule is as below:
- 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 closedThe Path service and Terms of Use governing your use of Path will terminate on [10.18.2018].
Prior to [10.18.2018], you can restore retrieve a copy of your data (i.e. your images, text, videos) by following below steps:
1. Visit https://path.com/settings/backups
2. Log in with your Path account
3. Click the button and enter email address that you wish to receive the backup files
OR
1. Open your Path app and go to Setting
2. Click the button and enter your email address that you would like to receive the backup files.
*Please make sure that your Path app is the latest ver.Please note that you will not be able to access the backup service site after [10.18.2018]. We may not retain copies of any of your data on and from that date. Accordingly, you are encouraged to download and keep copies of your data if you wish to have access from [10.18.2018].
I do notice that because part of the service’s cachet was either private or limited audience posts, that a lot of my early posting (from 11/29/10 to around December 2014) included photographs that I posted directly to Path and didn’t share very widely. As a result, a lot of my early posting wasn’t done from my own website, so I’m requesting a downloadable backup of all my data before the service goes under. If you used the service, I hope you’re requesting your download as well.
It’s kind of sad that amidst the toxicity of Twitter which gamifies following that a service that limited following and focused on the small and personal is collapsing.
Thanks for all the laughs and fun Path, and thanks for giving at least some warning before shutting down all your servers with all of that user data.
Mostly I’m glad that I’m able to post most of my content to my own site now without the reliance on third party social networks to save and maintain my data. If you’re worried about how social services use and abuse your data or may disappear with it altogether–Path will not be the last–and want more control over it, stop by IndieWeb.org to see how you can take back your online identity and data. I and many others are always happy to help those who are interested.
wow I just saw https://boffosocko.com/2018/09/20/the-last-goodbye-path-simple-personal-social-networking/
It took me a moment to realize what it was exactly since I hadn’t yet added a field to indicate it, but since the IndieWeb chat doesn’t send webmentions by itself, I’m glad I support refbacks to be aware of comments on my posts. The avatar didn’t come through quite like it should, but it’s nice to be able to treat refbacks like any other type of mention.
Thanks David Shanske for the Refbacks plugin. Thanks Tantek for what I think is my first incoming “mention” from chat.
The chat has some reasonable microformats markup, so I suppose the parser could do a more solid job, but this is a pretty great start. Sadly, Refback isn’t as real-time as Webmention, but it’s better than nothing.
My first mention (aka refback) from the IndieWeb chat. Click on the photo to see the UI display on my site.
I suppose we could all be posting chats on our own sites and syndicating into places like IRC to own our two directional conversations, but until I get around to the other half… (or at least for WordPress, I recall having gotten syndication to IRC for WithKnown working a while back via plugin.)