Path lays off 20 percent of workforce

Private social networking website Path seems to be going through a slight rough patch after its subscription-based model hasn’t exactly picked up pace.

Nishtha Kanal|Oct 16, 2013, 14:57:41 IST

Private social networking website Path seems to be going through a slight rough patch after its subscription-based model didn't exactly pick up pace. It has been reported that Path has laid off 20 percent of its staff in an effort to “support continued innovation”.

According to a Valleywag report, Path has laid off 13 employees – which represents 20 percent of its workforce. A spokesperson confirmed the layoffs and said in a statement, “We're working to realign the company to support continued innovation and Path 4.0.” Cover

Path lays off staff

The company confirmed to The Verge that none of the employees laid off were engineers and that the firings were sprinkled across the company, which means no one department is affected strongly because of these layoffs. Valleywag continued that Path is apparently looking for a lead investor for another round of funding. The valuation for the company has been pegged at $400 million, a cool $100 million less than what was originally expected.

The spokesperson went on to assure that all was well with the company and the layoffs were just a part of a realignment that Path was going through. He also said that Path was seeing 20 million users currently. However, this figure does not shed any light on how many of these are actually paid subscribers of the app.

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The paid subscription idea for Path came into being last month when the private social networking app offered a premium model for its services. For $1.99 a month on Android and $4.99 for three months on iOS, Path promises goodies like photo filters and new stickers.

The application has faced a fair share of issues relating to privacy, including one where the app stole users’ address books last year and ended up geotagging images even when users had explicitly asked the application not to. Hopefully, the overhaul within Path will also include an overhaul of the application and the privacy options too.

By Nishtha Kanal

Intrigued by all things social, Nishtha will invariably tweet about you. When not tweeting or writing about the next viral video, you will hear her proclaiming her love to Metallica, James Hetfield, Opeth, Akerfeldt and all bands that go 'growl'. She also obsesses about ACP Pradyuman and South Park and you will always find her moving around with a book. Her focus is on all the happening stuff in the tech domain, and she won't hesitate to take a shot at some of the oddball devices that make their way to our labs.