KaKoo

1. Path

Path is an online journal to which you can post photos, travel updates, the music you're listening to, etc. Use the app for keeping in touch with friends and family. Connect your social sites to share Path updates on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Click here to view this gallery.

Few social services have enjoyed as much success as sites like Foursquare and Pinterest. However, companies are achieving recognition by applying similar social principles to their own niche networks.

We’ve gathered a list of nine social services to keep an eye on. Like Foursquare, many incorporate location-based functionality, with the goal to connect people beyond the digital space — in real life. Other sites remind us of Pinterest, bringing users together around taste graphs and like-minded consumer habits.

Whatever your preference, take a look at these nine buzzworthy social platforms. Do they represent the future of social?

This May we’ll be exploring the future of social and digital at our signature conference, Mashable Connect. See below for all the details.

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Event Information

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Our annual destination conference, Mashable Connect, brings our community together for three days to connect offline in an intimate setting at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World®. It will take place in Orlando, Florida from Thursday, May 3 – Saturday, May 5. Registration is now open.

Held in a unique location away from everyday distractions, Mashable Connect is a rare and valuable opportunity to be surrounded by digital leaders across industries. You’ll spend time with Mashable’s passionate and influential community, hear from top speakers who will provide insight into the the technologies and trends that are shaping the next era of digital innovation, and get to spend time with the Mashable team.

To keep Mashable Connect as intimate as possible, only a limited amount of tickets are available.

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A Look Back at Last Year’s Mashable Connect

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1. Mashable Connect Race Powered by Gowalla

Team members check in to a race location at Magic Kingdom during the Mashable Connect Race powered by Gowalla.

Click here to view this gallery.

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Supporting Sponsor

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Sponsorship Opportunities

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A limited number of sponsor opportunities are available for Mashable Connect. This is an excellent opportunity to get in front of Mashable’s passionate and influential audience. Contact sponsorships@mashable.com for opportunities.

Image courtesy of Flickr, real.tingley

More About: banjo, Fancy, features, Highlight, location-based, Path, Social Media, Sonar, trending

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1. Path

Path is an online journal to which you can post photos, travel updates, the music you're listening to, etc. Use the app for keeping in touch with friends and family. Connect your social sites to share Path updates on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Click here to view this gallery.

Few social services have enjoyed as much success as sites like Foursquare and Pinterest. However, companies are achieving recognition by applying similar social principles to their own niche networks.

We’ve gathered a list of nine social services to keep an eye on. Like Foursquare, many incorporate location-based functionality, with the goal to connect people beyond the digital space — in real life. Other sites remind us of Pinterest, bringing users together around taste graphs and like-minded consumer habits.

Whatever your preference, take a look at these nine buzzworthy social platforms. Do they represent the future of social?

This May we’ll be exploring the future of social and digital at our signature conference, Mashable Connect. See below for all the details.

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Event Information

---

Our annual destination conference, Mashable Connect, brings our community together for three days to connect offline in an intimate setting at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World®. It will take place in Orlando, Florida from Thursday, May 3 – Saturday, May 5. Registration is now open.

Held in a unique location away from everyday distractions, Mashable Connect is a rare and valuable opportunity to be surrounded by digital leaders across industries. You’ll spend time with Mashable’s passionate and influential community, hear from top speakers who will provide insight into the the technologies and trends that are shaping the next era of digital innovation, and get to spend time with the Mashable team.

To keep Mashable Connect as intimate as possible, only a limited amount of tickets are available.

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A Look Back at Last Year’s Mashable Connect

---

1. Mashable Connect Race Powered by Gowalla

Team members check in to a race location at Magic Kingdom during the Mashable Connect Race powered by Gowalla.

Click here to view this gallery.

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Supporting Sponsor

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Sponsorship Opportunities

---

A limited number of sponsor opportunities are available for Mashable Connect. This is an excellent opportunity to get in front of Mashable’s passionate and influential audience. Contact sponsorships@mashable.com for opportunities.

Image courtesy of Flickr, real.tingley

More About: banjo, Fancy, features, Highlight, location-based, Path, Social Media, Sonar, trending

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Twitter has acknowledged the “Find Friends” feature on its iPhone app stores contact lists on its servers, echoing a recent controversy surrounding the Path iOS app.

UPDATE: Wednesday afternoon, Apple issued a statement saying iOS apps accessing users’ contact lists will require explicit permission.

After users opt to have the Twitter app search their phones, the company stores their address book’s names, emails addresses and phone numbers on its servers for 18 months.

Like many other iOS apps, Twitter allows users to have the app “scan your contacts for people you already know on Twitter.” Until now, the storage aspect had not been explicitly stated in Twitter’s privacy policy nor did the Find Friends function specify it would be transmitting and storing data.

Twitter’s policy stated that “Log Data” could include IP addresses, browser types, referring domains, pages visited, mobile carriers, device and application IDs, and search terms, among other activities.

Twitter says it will be updating its apps to clarify this process to users.

“We want to be clear and transparent in our communications with users,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times. “Along those lines, in our next app updates, which are coming soon, we are updating the language associated with Find Friends — to be more explicit.

“In place of ‘Scan your contacts,’ we will use ‘Upload your contacts’ and ‘Import your contacts’ (in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, respectively).”

Twitter users can opt to remove their contacts from Twitter’s database on the desktop website.

Twitter’s announcement comes one week after Path — a social network that limits your total connections to 150 — was found to be storing contact lists on its servers by a Mac OS X developer.

Path CEO Dave Morin published an apology to users Feb. 8, writing that the company had since deleted all of the information stored in individuals’ contact books, which Path had stored.

Path subsequently released a mobile update (version 2.0.6), which allows users to opt out of sending their contact lists to Path’s servers and gives users the option to have the servers delete information should they have accidentally stored their data in the past.

Following the Path incident, two members of Congress sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook Wednesday, instructing the company to clarify its consumer privacy policies.

Are you concerned about what mobile apps do with your information? Are there any other apps of note you’ve caught storing your information? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, SimmiSimons

More About: iphone, Mobile, Path, privacy, trending, Twitter

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Dave Morin, the CEO of beleaguered social network Path, posted an apology today addressing the recent controversy over how the app accesses information on a user’s phone. Saying the the company made a mistake, Morin promises Path has purged all address-book data from its servers.

In the blog post, titled simply “We are sorry,” Morin says Path values its users’ trust more than anything, which is why the company opted to delete the “entire collection” of user-uploaded contact information. (The full text is below.)

“We made a mistake,” Morin writes. “Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.”

In the apology, Morin reiterated that Path takes the storage and transmission of personal information “very, very seriously” and said the data was used only as a friend-suggestion tool and to notify users when contacts joined the network. Morin says the information was always encrypted during transmission and stored on Path’s servers using “industry standard firewall technology.”

SEE ALSO: Photo-Sharing Network Path Gets Organized With Stacks

In an update to the iOS app, which is now available on the App Store, Path version 2.0.6 will prompt users to opt in or out of sharing their phones’ contacts with the app. As before, if users change their minds, they can email Path’s customer service department and the company promises to delete the information from its servers.

After downloading the update, the app will prompt you to let it access your address-book data with the following screen:

The whole controversy mirrors similar privacy issues that arose around Facebook, specifically the gathering of user information and how the social network shares that data with third parties such as advertisers. Those issues eventually led to an FTC investigation of Facebook, which ended with a settlement last year in which the company submitted itself to regular privacy audits.

Has Path done enough to put this controversy to rest? Let us know what you think of the company’s apology and remedy in the comments.

Here’s the full text of Path’s apology:

We are sorry.

We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts.

As our mission is to build the world’s first personal network, a trusted place for you to journal and share life with close friends and family, we take the storage and transmission of your personal information very, very seriously.

Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.

In the interest of complete transparency we want to clarify that the use of this information is limited to improving the quality of friend suggestions when you use the ‘Add Friends’ feature and to notify you when one of your contacts joins Path––nothing else. We always transmit this and any other information you share on Path to our servers over an encrypted connection. It is also stored securely on our servers using industry standard firewall technology.

We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.

In Path 2.0.6, released to the App Store today, you are prompted to opt in or out of sharing your phone’s contacts with our servers in order to find your friends and family on Path. If you accept and later decide you would like to revoke this access, please send an email to service@path.com and we will promptly see to it that your contact information is removed.

We care deeply about your privacy and about creating a trusted place for you to share life with your close friends and family. As we continue to expand and grow we will make some mistakes along the way. We commit to you that we will continue to be transparent and always serve you, our users, first.

We hope this update clears up any confusion. You can find Path 2.0.6 in the App Store here.

Sincerely,

Dave Morin
Co-Founder and CEO

More About: Path, privacy, Social Media, trending

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Patrick Moorhead is president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, a highly regarded high-tech industry analyst firm focused on the disruptive ecosystems of smartphones, tablets, personal computers, living room devices and social media.

New social media service Path promises to bring your true friends (not just acquaintances) together in a much more personal way. However, neither Path, nor Facebook, nor Google+ have fully comprehended that personal circles vary by context, and that context changes rapidly and infinitely.  

In the end, while services like Path get us closer to “personal,” they are still very much “broadcast” versions of social media. Ultimately, new services will arise that will allow the user to easily and naturally build relationships, physically meet and communicate with one’s rapidly morphing groups of true friends.        

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How Humans Interact

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To fully understand how structured broadcast and personal social models differ, we need to look at real life. First and foremost, people segment friends and groups based on a specific context. To put it simply, there are people we are very close with, people we may have never heard of, but who seem “safe,” then there are thousands of groups in-between. And that context only changes more over time. Even though it sounds confusing, we build and segment groups because the action has been hard-wired into our brains.  

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The “Broadcast” Social Media Problem

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The Facebook, Google+ and Path networks liken online interaction to shouting in different-sized movie theaters, each of which contains a different combination of close friends, family members and acquaintances. Most people in the movie theater aren’t even listening; others listen but ignore; and an even smaller group reacts to what’s being said.

For most people on the receiving end, a post is typically out of context, irrelevant, doesn’t require a response or was just plain missed. For example, some children aren’t on Facebook during school hours, and many older demographics don’t check notifications on a regular basis, or else they use their accounts for very specific purposes only.  

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What Defines “Personal” Today?

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I outlined the challenges that come with a “broadcast” model of social media. So what do I mean by “personal?” Quite simply, personal reflects how we interact in the physical world.

The infinite number of groups we encounter in the everyday world communicate in a way you would expect: over the phone, through text, BlackBerry Messenger, face to face and via email. However, some of the tools we employ — even in today’s fast-paced digital environment — are slow, inefficient or even inaccessible.  

For example, three families may want to go out to dinner after the eighth grade basketball game. Let’s assume there are six parents total and kids don’t get a vote. Just imagine how many texts it will take to arrange this. One dad has to work late and will need to meet up with the group later. Another dad is a vegan. Mom really wants a steak. Kids from one family hate Mexican restaurants. One mom decides to send out an Evite to solve all the issues, while another mom decides she’ll send a message out on Facebook, but she’s not friends with third mom.

My head spins in these kinds of circumstances — but this is real life.  There must be an easier way to manage, right?  

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Personal Tools to Fill the Gap

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If today’s personal tools don’t work well enough, then what would a better set of tools look like? The following features would would help improve personal interactions. Here’s what made my wish list.

• The ability to create groups from two to 50 people, based on an “event” or “theme.”
• Events would indicate locations along with all relevant information (hours, ratings, reviews, direction, maps, parking, etc.).
• Themed groups would contain a name, description and privacy options.
• We would have the ability to see all the threads in a message. 
• We would be able to add real friends who are typically in our everyday address books.
• The network would be multi-platform, and feature smartphone, tablet and PC access.
• The network would feature email, map and calendar integration.

This kind of a personal tool wouldn’t replace broadcast tools, but would operate alongside broadcast tools like Facebook, Google+ and Path.

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New, More Personal Tools Emerging

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Personal tools like group text and Evite work alongside broadcast tools, but they are inefficient or slow. However, new tool Forecast fits a few of the criteria above. The app tells friends specifically where you will be going in the future and allows people comment on those plans.

Another tool, called Goba, is more personal than broadcast. It allows the user to set up events or groups from his address book. Those in the group receive messages and can chat from a smartphone, tablet or PC. When I met with the Goba team, we discussed incorporating local data into the events portion of the tool. This way, users could suggest places to go and have access to enough data to make a good decision. Then, once the group decided on a plan, the maps would help individuals get there.  

Personal tools have a long way to go, but these kinds of services will be the next big thing in social media. After all, just how many more movie theaters do we need to scream in?

Image courtesy of Flickr, selva

More About: contributor, Facebook, features, Google, Opinion, Path, Social Media

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The Digital Photo and Film Series is supported by Adobe® Photoshop® Elements. To connect with the product team, find creative tutorials, tips and information, join them on Facebook and Twitter.

With smartphones projected to take over feature phones in the United States this year, there are a lot of people walking around with cameras in their pockets.

And so, an abundance of apps has launched recently to cater to all the smartphone owners who might want to snap a quick shot as they roam the city streets. It’s now easier to take, tweak, share and display photos than it ever was in the pre-app world. These are some of our favorites.

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Snap and Share

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Instagram and Picplz have virtually identical functionality for adding effects to photos and sharing them with friends. Both allow you to add filters after you take photos, share them to Facebook and Twitter, view popular photos from other users, and follow friends to see their photos from a news feed. Even the interfaces of the two apps are so similar that at first glance you might mistake them for each other.

The biggest difference between the two free photo sharing services is that PicPlz has an Android app while Instagram does not (neither has a BlackBerry app). Picplz also gives its users slightly more control of camera settings in its Android app than Instagram does in its iPhone app, and it recently added a “collection” feature that easily adds photos to a group file (Instagram accomplishes this function via hashtag).

If you’re an iPhone user and have the option to choose between the two (Android users, also check out Vignette), the best way to decide between them comes down to which network most of your friends use. You can scope out the situation on each app by connecting your Twitter and/or Facebook profiles to the photo app.

Hipstamatic, $1.99, is another similar option for iPhone. While its more expansive filter collection produces beautiful effects, it doesn’t integrate social sharing like Instagram and PicPlz do.

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Share Selectively

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Chances are that all 600 of your Facebook friends are not interested in seeing your life documented. Nor are you probably interested in sharing all of those photos. But for a close group of friends, access to your photo diary is an interesting way to stay in touch.

Path, which launched in November, aims to personalize photo sharing. The app asks you to create a network of fewer than 50 people. Each time you take a photo using the app, you have an option to tag it with three simple things: people, places and things. Each photo can be shared to just your Path friends, individual friends, or your Facebook wall.

If your Path friends have push notifications set, they’ll get a message when you share it with them, and your photo posts will also show up on their Facebook newsfeeds (only visible to friends who you’ve selected).

As you take and share photos, you create a timeline or “path” of your life. As of March, you can alter shots with Instagram-like photo lenses. There’s also an option to add 10-second video clips to this timeline.

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Sort and Display

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Using multiple photo apps can easily result in photo overload, but there are several apps that address this very problem by organizing and streamlining your pics.

Browser app Memolane takes social media activity, including photos from Instagram and Facebook, and automatically plots it in a searchable scrapbook. When you want to remember, let’s say, a vacation, you can search for that point in the timeline to see Foursquare checkins, photos, videos and updates you made during that time period.

Gramframe, a $1.99 iPad app, uses Instagram’s public API to create iPad photo gallery screensavers for its users. If you want to put your friend’s photos into the mix, Pixable’s Photofeed iPad app has a slideshow feature that can accomplish something similar with friend’s Facebook photos, though the iPad will still go black after its normal sleep time.

Photofeed browser, iPhone and iPad apps also allow you to follow photo updates from specific Facebook friends and sorts photos into categories like “most popular,” “family updates” and “new profile photos.”

If you want to bring things into the physical world, you have your pick of services for creating albums from digital photos — SnapFish, Shutterfly, MyPublisher and Apple’s photo book service are some of the most popular. Then there’s Instaprint, which prints Instagram photos with a retro Polaroid camera look.

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Series Supported by Adobe Photoshop Elements

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The Digital Photo and Film Series is supported by the Adobe® Photoshop® Elements product team. Adobe’s® photo-editing software delivers powerful options that make it easy to create extraordinary photos, unique print creations, quickly share memories in online albums, and automatically organize and help protect your photos. Download a free trial of Adobe® Photoshop® Elements® 9 to try it out!

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More Photography Resources from Mashable:

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- iPhotography: 10 Pro Tips for Snapping Perfect iPhone Photos
- 15 Incredible iPhone Dog Photographs
- 7 Superb Short Films Shot With Cellphones
- 10 Essential Websites for iPhone Photographers
- 10 Incredible iPhone Portrait Photographs

More About: Digital Photo and Film Series, gramframe, hipstamatic, instagram, iphotography, memolane, Path, photo apps, Photos, picplz, Pixable

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