Emptyage

To be at 15 million users on one platform is not something any other social mobile company can say. There are a lot of others that are in that size range but are multi-platform. We saw an opportunity to be really good at one thing, and it turns out that helped us. It wasn’t because we felt like Android wasn’t an opportunity we wanted to go after. It wasn’t about the quality of the phone—there are plenty of awesome Android phones; we have a bunch in the office that have beautiful displays and beautiful cameras. It’s more that we were three people trying to keep the site up. We’re now eight people, with ten people worldwide.

The Dan formed when Denny Dias, founder of The Dan, placed an ad seeking bass and keys, admonishing “no assholes need apply.” Thankfully Becker and Fagen ignored the warning. In a few years they had ousted Dias from his own band. What a couple of pricks.

My Twitter and Facebook (and probably Google ) feeds are lousy with links. Everyone is always wanting you to look at their latest thing. So many social media updates are little more than pleas. Look at this! Look at this! Look at this! It’s annoying. And of course, I do it too.

But that hasn’t been the case on Path. Until today, you couldn’t link out. Drop a link in a Path update, and it was useless. Everything took place within the app. There were no distractions. No pleas to go look at something else, somewhere else. Path itself was the ultimate destination.

By adding tappable links (in other words standard hyperlinks) Path is changing from a destination, to a launching point. And of course, because even very small networks can be very powerful, that makes it a lot more attractive for self-promoting. It feels a little like when you’re hanging out with someone and it’s going really well, and you think you’re having a great, genuine conversation, and then all the sudden they hand you a business card and offer you a quote on auto insurance.

But turning your profile picture green, adding a black banner over your face, or tacking your surname onto another online petition is the adult equivalent of slapping a peace sign onto your teenage backpack. Fauxtivism is worse than nothing—it trivializes the issue, mistakes gesture for action—and makes you feel good when you haven’t accomplished a thing.

CES, like many industry conventions, will be thick with “booth babes”—women paid to stand around in revealing clothing in order to draw men to the booths and see terrible products. That’s regrettable. Not only because it is sexist, but also because it just makes your company look like a bunch of undersexed nimrods. If the only way you can get people interested in your product is to have a scantily clad woman appear next to it for no apparent reason, your products are probably awful. And besides, it’s boring. It’s just boring. It’s been done so many times, for so many years, that my only reaction to seeing a booth bunny is to think, “Here is a company that is completely out of ideas.” Look, technology industry CEOs, if you want to stick a butt in my face, I’d be way more impressed if you made it your own fat ass. Butter up that big white rump of yours and squeeze it into a little red thong. Strap those mantits into a cheetah bra that lets your pale hairy cleavage see the light of day. Do that, and I promise you that I’ll listen to your pitch. (Even if it’s a little awkward for both of us!) Better yet, get the whole pasty, overpaid, C-level crew into some sexy swimwear. People will talk. You’ll be the buzz.

The big knock on Twitter, in its early days, was that it was simply a place for people to post what they were eating for lunch. And who cares about that? Who cares? How asinine. How banal.

Well, sometimes I care. It depends entirely on who is eating, and not at all what they are having. Yes, that may be banal, but what moments in life that truly matter are not? Over the last two weeks on Path I saw, again and again, the triumph of banality.

But as Romney begins to set his sights on the general election, shifting his attacks from his Republican opponents to President Obama, a disturbing pattern is emerging. Romney is moving from making false promises to bearing false witness, suggesting that the person at Romney’s core isn’t a moderate. It’s a liar. Twice in recent days Romney and his campaign have repeated President Obama’s words in a false context. Romney didn’t shade their meaning, or twist the words in a hey-it’s-politics way. He lied about what the president said.

But political journalism—unlike war reporting—long ago stopped being about what is true or important. Sometime in the nineteen-eighties, reporters began covering politics like sports and entertainment. How many times and ways can you say that the Republican Party has descended into unreality and extremism before you lose your viewers and readers? On the other hand, there’s an endless appetite for stories about Santorum’s effort to reach out beyond his evangelical base, or Gingrich playing the expectations game in Iowa. This stuff is political candy.