Path, a private social network popular in Asia, has announced that the messages on its server will be kept only for 24 hours beginning next week.
“To further improve your privacy when messaging on Path, all messages will become 24 hour ephemeral starting June 11th,” read the company’s message to its users on Friday.
“All messages downloaded from our servers will be kept on your device until you log out, uninstall or update to a new version of Path.” The messages currently stored will also be deleted next week.
The app was introduced as a private network exclusively for close friends, immediate family and close relatives whom users want to be in touch with. There are also rumours that this announcement is part of the company’s strategy to increase the limit of the number of friends each user can have. Currently, it allows users to have up to 150 friends.
Earlier this year, there were rumours around a user who posted screenshots of user-increase testing, suggesting such a move from Path. However, the company has remained tight lipped about such plans.
A lot of apps that are making a big splash contemporarily have started rolling out ephemeral messaging ever since Snapchat introduced this feature, for instance, Tinder announced on Thursday that it would roll out this feature very soon.
Back in 2012, Path CEO Dave Morin said that the app is growing more popular in Asia. Announcements about Path signing a deal with Sony to preload the app in all Sony Xperia devices surfaced in 2013. The company allegedly has a user base exceeding 20 million. Apple has also announced that its Messages app for iOS 8 will come with a similar feature.
