The Indonesian media is still buzzing from the Bakrie deal with Path and many are contemplating all sorts of strategies and schemes that the Bakrie Group might do with Path as if it had acquired the company outright. Somehow the idea that Bakrie Group did not, seems to have been deflected off their thick skulls. Once again, Path hasn’t been acquired by anyone. Anyone who thinks so is an idiot.
The Bakrie Group led this round of financing which will be used by the company for research, innovation, and expansion of the service. There’s no word as to the exact amount each investor chipped in this time but Bakrie did not put $25 million into Path, it’s the total amount raised from several investors with Bakrie being named as the lead.
Whether Bakrie actually did lead the round is a whole different matter as this entire thing may well be a calculated PR move after all. As long as Path is a private company, it’s not under any obligation to disclose its financials. Who’s to say that there aren’t other Indonesian investors riding on this as well who prefer to remain unnamed? Who’s to say that Bakrie did not figure this entire exposé into its investment strategy? Negative publicity is still publicity.
Of course people are going to highlight the group’s shortcomings and violations because it’s all been reported publicly. The Bakrie Group is one of the most prominent corporate entities in the country and thanks to Anindya Bakrie’s father, Aburizal, being a prominent politician and presidential hopeful, there’s no escaping the coverage.
Switch away from Path?
Personally, no way I’m gonna quit using Path because right now, there aren’t any better alternative. Facebook is a mess. It may have the best infrastructure and the most features for a social network, but it has also accumulated years worth of junk and connections that simply are no longer there.
Compared to the effort in cleaning up my Facebook account, it’s simply far more practical and time efficient to just use Path as my personal network and use Facebook for its messaging service because almost everyone is contactable through Facebook, something that Google is trying to emulate with its recent addition to Google+. Speaking of which, this is how to stop people from emailing you using Google+.
If Twitter is the pulse of the world, Path is where I maintain my close connections. The app is beautifully designed, focused on its intention as a personal network, and it has just the right amount of social elements –although it would really help if we could mute notifications from unwanted individual posts or untag ourselves from posts we don’t want to be tagged in.
The ability to share certain posts outside of Path is a great option to keep people within the app and get them to use Path as a social dashboard. Path is pretty much the ideal modern journal. As long as it maintains that experience or improves on it, it’s not going away from people’s devices.
One last point, when the heck is Path for Windows Phone going to be available for public? If North American developers aren’t giving Windows Phone a priority, there are plenty of Indonesian Windows Phone developers who are capable and willing to build a fully optimized version. Bring it here and they’ll take care of it.
