Bijan Sabet

Take my data

The Path story continues this week.

You can check out all the various posts on the subject on Techmeme right now.

The issue is that Path 2.0 had used our personal address book data to find friends that also use Path.

At the highest level, I think that is a feature - not a bug or a problem for that matter.

I’m sure there are things that Apple and dozens (or more) of iOS apps can do better to make the user aware of what’s going on. But here’s the thing: i want apps to do more with my data. It makes my life better, not worse.

Consider Google.

Google knows everything about me. Everything. They know my search history. Map queries. They own my mail, calender and address book. They have my task manager. All my docs.

I made that trade because Google does those things better than desktop apps or behind the firewall apps. Close your eyes and imagine that you had to run your own mail server or use Microsoft Exchange.

I gave all my photos to Flickr back in the day because they did a better job with it than I could.

That’s the give:get thing about the web.

That doesn’t mean I should give my data and the web service should mistreat me and sell my data without my persmission. But if they want to use my data to provide better things like “find my friends” then please please take my data.

I trust that Path is going to use my data to make the product better. That’s Dave’s mission. He’s trying to build the best private social journal and he’s off to a great start.

I wish other things in my life used my data to make my life better. That’s a fair trade to me.