If you are lucky enough to own one of the Jawbone UP bracelets that doesn’t have issues, then you’re probably pretty psyched at the potential the simple and streamlined life-tracking device holds. You know what else is psyching me up right now? The prettiness of Path’s re-launch and expansion into a slicker, more agile life timeline, a way to curate the overwhelming amount of content you produce as a digital citizen.

Path has two key features that indicate where social sharing is heading. The first is sleep mode. While some might not “get” why people would want to share their sleep patterns with their friends, Dave Morin (and UP creator Hosain Rahman) do; “It used to be that people would be online or off. Nowadays with mobile, it’s more like asleep or awake,” Morin told me yesterday.

Exactly.

I love my UP wristband in just its own little app silo, but last night when I clicked it before I fell asleep, I wished that my sleep info would sync to Path so hard it hurt. Same goes for waking up.

Both Path and UP devices play into natural human laziness: UP uses its accelerometer to automatically track and graph the number of steps you take a day, Path uses the iPhone’s GPS to automatically update your timeline with “Arrived @ Location” anytime you travel a distance that could be traveled by plane.

Mind you, the sharing of this kind of extremely personal information like sleeping, eating and exercising (and trusting “smart” updating) is only possible when you’re sharing with a limited amount of people. The difference between a being “journal that writes itself” and an invader of user privacy is 50 versus 500 friends.

Path also has the beginner’s advantage of being new to the market; You’re more likely to want to share with a social graph you JUST picked, versus the one you started building on Facebook four years ago.

I have little idea how I’m supposed to set up a “Team” on UP (yeah, I know you can manually search for people but somehow remembering people’s names has gone the way of remembering people’s phone numbers in the age of the instant Friends List). If only there was a mobile-based social network built specifically for private sharing …

Think about Facebook versus Path like email versus texting, email is great if you’re on the web with a wide variety of people whereas texting is suited to mobile devices and few contacts. In the age of the almighty Facebook, micro-networks like Path can and will survive because of smartphone OS evolution and hardware advancements like UP, the Withing scale or Nike+.

The UP bracelet progresses mobile life-tracking . And Path mobile life-sharing. Both have some kinks that need to be worked out (the food tracker on UP absolutely needs to be supplemented by something like this crazy app that comes up with calorie counts of photographed meals using Mechanical Turk).

But it is early early days.

This past spring, the team at Path realized it was time for a change. The San Francisco-based startup had debuted its flagship photo sharing app (accompanied with a serious amount of media buzz and some mixed reviews) in November 2010, and had spent the first several months post-launch working to perfect the original product.

“Six months ago we stopped. We just said, ‘Okay, what are people really using Path to do?’” Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin said in an interview this week. The company surveyed Path users and found that many were using the app to remember moments in their daily lives — it wasn’t just about sharing photos, it was about cataloging personal memories for themselves. “Ultimately we realized that we had to completely re-imagine Path.”

Path 2, the new version of Path that is launching Tuesday for both iPhone and Android, is what’s emerged from that redesign effort. But to think of this as the 2.0 version of Path would be a big mistake: Path 2 is a dramatically different product than the app the company launched one year ago.

A diary for a mobile and social world
Path 2 aims to be a “smart journal” that catalogs all the big and small moments of your daily life. Along with your photos and videos, the new app has features that let you keep track of your thoughts, the music you’re listening to, where you are, who you’re with, and even when you wake and when you sleep. You can choose to keep each update entirely to yourself, share it with your Path contacts (limited to 150 based on Dunbar’s number), or share it publicly via Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare (Tumblr support is on the way.)

Path 2 screenshot (click to enlarge)

Morin took me through an in-depth demo of Path 2, and for me it had the perfect combination that I look for in the increasingly crowded world of mobile apps: It was both beautiful and actually useful. Lots of people — myself included — maintain personal blogs or use social media sites partly for the same reason that they would maintain a diary: To personally remember what they’ve done. Every New Years’, I vow that I will be better about tracking the little things that make up my days by keeping a journal, but I typically start slacking off on it a couple months in. With Path 2, it could be a lot easier to keep my resolution: It’s on my mobile phone which makes it easy, and the social options make it more fun.

More complexity, more competition
With this redesign, Path is going more squarely into competition with services such as Evernote and even Facebook, the platform on which it was conceived as a much simpler photo-sharing app one year ago. When asked about this, Morin stressed that Path is different from Facebook on several counts: “We’re private by default and always will be, while Facebook is often public by defualt. We’re a tech company, Facebook is a media company. We’re a freemium business, and Facebook is advertising driven.” He was more accepting of an Evernote comparison, but pointed out that many people use Evernote primarily to keep track of their business lives. “What Evernote does for work, we do for life.”

Path 2 music post (click to enlarge)

This move also brings up questions for Path that weren’t there when it was a simple photo sharing app. When you position your service to be something as personal as a diary, users have the right to be a bit more demanding than they would with a more standard social app. For example: Path 2 still does not have a one-button export feature for all your content, although Morin says this is on the way. Right now, the only way to get all your data from the system is by sending an email request to customer service.

Also, the ability to view and analyze your Path data from other perspectives — say by zooming out to see an annual timeline, or a month view — is not yet available. These types of features could be made possible if Path releases an API, which Morin says is a definite possibility for the future.

But will it have staying power?
The question of money is an important one here. Many web startups don’t start thinking seriously about revenue in the first couple years of business, but if you’re going to use an app as your personal journal, you want to have confidence that it will stay around for a while. Evernote, for example, is a profitable business: The company charges $45 per year for its premium app and the company’s CEO Phil Libin has been forthright about his mission to make Evernote a going concern for the next 100 years.

Path, which has 20 employees, is not at a point where it can cover its own costs. Path 2 is a totally free app and Morin says he has no plans to start running ads. The business model is a “freemium” one, but for now the only premium products Path sells are small: Additional photo filter options and the like. Path has other premium offerings in the pipeline, Morin tells me, and the good news is the company won’t have to worry about keeping the lights on for a while: It has taken on some $11 million in funding since its inception.

All in all, Path 2 is a great looking app and it stands a chance to become a big hit in the months ahead. But if it wants people to really be serious about committing to the new app, Path could do well to outline its financial plans a bit more firmly for prospective users.

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Sharing things using your mobile phone is nothing new, but apps like Path are putting a new spin on sharing by only allowing you to have a network of fifty people to share photos and videos with.

One app wants to take that number down to two. It is called Cupple, and was built by creative agency Darling Dash for iOS.

Cupple focuses on sharing the most private moments, those being ones between you and your significant other.

Perfect for long distance relationships
If you travel a lot, or have a long distance relationship, Cupple is a pretty handy app. While sending photos back and forth with love notes might be something you use text messaging for, the location features in Cupple allow you to let your loved one know that you’re thinking of them.



While the app only lets you share photos right now, the idea of collecting moments and locations as your relationship with someone grows is a cute idea. I’d like to see a web component at some point, because if you’re lucky enough to have your relationship turn into a marriage, it would be nice to glance back at all of the moments you’ve shared with each other.

I spoke with the Co-Founder & CEO of Darling Dash, Tim Allison, about the originating idea behind Cupple.

TNW: What was lacking with other sharing sites or services, like email, that couples needed?

Tim Allison: I think there is an uncertainty around sharing really personal content on existing social media. It doesn’t feel like the right place for it. Cupple allows the two people in a relationship to have fun sharing photos and building a feed of memories and there is no concern over how that might be viewed by their wider social network. Email and SMS certainly have their place but they have become very functional and often just blur into the daily routine. Cupple is a richer, more connected sharing experience. And of course, completely mobile.

TNW: Why is sharing for couples so important?

Tim Allison: We’re different people when we are with our partners. The intimacy that people share, albeit in-jokes, experiences, places and memories is unique in a relationship. Cupple recognises the bond and the timeline that exists between two people who share a life. Cupple works for teenagers who have just got together just as much as it does for a couple that have been married for 5 years.

TNW: Are you finding that more and more couples share things on the go?

Tim Allison: We have busy lives and we use mobile all day. Whether it’s a simple ‘thinking of you’ share or letting your partner know this restaurant is a ‘place we should go’, Cupple connects people when they are apart and adds a context to the message. I want to be able to share something I’ve seen with my girlfriend when I’m out and about, if I’m traveling with work, having dinner with friends, or I simply see a dress in a window I know she would like. Cupple let’s us share the moments when we are on the go and keeps that memory in a a private place.

TNW: What are your future plans for the app, what will you be adding?

Tim Allison: The plan is to build the best private sharing experience on the planet. We wanted to launch the service with the core features working really well. There are so many ideas we have around the user being able to modify and customize their sharing experience. Of course, shared calendars and ideas around bookmarks and content of interest is on the roadmap. We see Cupple as a platform that is truly scalable. Right now, we’re focused on delivering a great service and paying attention to what our users say about their experience. It’s really just the start of a journey.

If you’re looking for a way to share moments with your loved one while on the road, or from up the street on your way from home, Cupple could be a nice way to text less and share more.