The Retail Metaphor and the Wayward Path

We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and efficiently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more.

Note, this is done without explicit user permission.

This is the equivalent of that geriatric Walmart greeter grabbing your purse, or trapper keeper, or briefcase, and scurrying off to make a copy, so that when you’re buying socks, everyone in your professional and personal lives is kept abreast of the development. For your convenience. And then declaring, as Path’s CEO did, that “This is currently the industry best practice.”

Path can line up all the pretty pixels they want, but they clearly don’t understand customer experience. They’d be well served shutting down, going to a mom and pop store of old, or finding a trusty barkeep, or a barista, and learning at their feet.

The test for great customer experience is simple. “Is this something I would do to a customer in real life?”

-Shlok
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