The Periling Plight of Path Purgatory » An Apology of Sorts

I'm sorry guys, I've run outta room

As a kid, I remember being spazmatic; random ticks, uncontrolled squinting, jumping & convulsing, unintelligible outbursts, I think you know the type.

Playing sports made it worse. Imagine the social discomfort inflicted upon those around me.

This is certainly the most probable cause for frequent ‘last pick’ on kickball teams.

So it’s with a certain distress that I write this.

It’s not you, it’s me.

My latest fascination has been a mobile social network called Path – an absolutely gorgeous product.

Every user interaction so well thought out — and combining the best of individual apps; posts, check-ins, music listened too, pictures (with filters), emoticons, and cross posting to your other fav apps (twitter, facebook, tumblr, & foursquare at the time of this writing). You’ll also see who of your friends have actually seen your posts, which is a nice touch.

It’s all you’d want from Facebook but in a much more brilliant experience — thing is, you can only connect with 150 people.

Which has brought me to this.

I’ve exhausted all my connections. Several times as a matter of fact. Who knew it’d be so hard to designate only your most 150 personal relationships?

When I first found out about the service (thank you Matt Matteson), I made the mistake of adding a bunch of folks who quickly stopped using the service for whatever reason (it was capped at 50 friends back then). That seemed okay because it was infrequently used.

Now that Path 2.0 has gained traction, it’s increasingly difficult to identify only 150 people. Some are family, colleagues, conference buddies – it just goes on. So I find myself filtering and pruning… a lot.

1. Who have I friended that never returned the favor?  Gary Vaynerchuk, Robert Scoble, Brian Solis, MG Siegler – I get it, crazy popular folks who are inundated with requests.
2. Who unfriended me at some point and is now just taking up space?  (I know, you don’t like so many pictures of my new son)
3. Asking myself, do I really want to expose personal posts to this person?

As such, I’m pruning again. Weeding through requests from people who have ended up in this state of Path purgatory where I’m not sure I want to let them off the hook by clicking ‘x’ while at the same time not having enough space to click ‘add’

I’m really sorry to leave you in this condition… it’s horrible being in limbo. Just not enough room to squeeze everyone in. Believe me when I say that I understand what it’s like to not be first pick.

Just wish my parents had discovered Ritalin.