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May 1, 2013 03:40 pm GMT

Pathgate Part 2? No One Cares.

path-emoticons copyIt’s been too long since we’ve had a “gate.” Remember Antennagate? Those were good times. We even got Steve Jobs toacknowledgethat one. But Pathgate, part 2, the sequel? Sorry, but no one cares. But wait! What’s that, you say? Path has 10 million users now, so these new allegations of address book spamming are a REALLY. BIG. DEAL. 10 million people care! No. No, they don’t. Path doesn’t have 10 million active users, it has 10 million registered users. That’s a big difference. We don’t know how many active users Path has, because this is a metric mobile app markers don’t like to share. But according to AppData, Path is estimated to have around a million monthly actives. This figure is determined by those who have connected with Facebook via the application, so it’s a rough way to gain insight into usage since a) not all of an app’s users connect via Facebook, and b) its data has become slightly more obscured these days following some erroneous misinterpretationsabout Facebook-owned Instagram’s user count. The point is that the number of people who use Path, and who would get legitimately upset about any sort of bad behavior on its part, is still relatively low. It’s not like Facebook screwed up here – it’s Path, for god’s sakes. Path. A bespoke messaging app for you and 150 of your closest friends. (Just kidding about that “bespoke” part. You should read more Vanity Fair.) In case you’re totally lost, here’s the background: some guy installed Path and invited friends to use the app with him. The app did just that, and the guy got mad. No seriously, that’s the story. Path’s only mistake in the matter – if you can even call it that – is that it defaults its “invite friends” section to an opt-out experience, as opposed to an opt-in one. If you move too quickly through the “invite friends” screen, then you might miss this step, which is exactly what happened to this poor gentleman. His gaffe ended up ringing his family members’ landlines in some cases, as that’s the number they have on file with Facebook. (And landlines in the UK, where this user resides, can receive text messages. Landlines!) I get that it’s veryembarrassing to have misinterpreted the “invite friends” screen’s text to assume that it means, “oh, we’ll quietly tap your friends on the shoulder next time we

Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1BvkWI6a3Cw/

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