I don't know the exact details of this story, may be the blogger accidentally pressed a button in the app and the messages were queued up for the following day.
However, if the story is indeed cut and dry:
1) Path sent messages that qualify as spam both because they had no permission to send them and they were false.
2) If this was intentional, this should be a red flag to investors not just of the company but the kind of people that run it.
3) This is nothing new. Tagged did the same thing, with e-mail, which to some degree falls afoul of less laws than using text messages or the telephone (other commentators pointed out that land line carriers convert SMS to voice calls, which is news to me.)
4) Using spammy methods to acquire users is a red flag for any web service. While arguably Facebook used and uses extremely aggressive e-mail notifications (sending out an e-mail for every minor thing, and whenever a new feature is added opting in the user to receive notifications by default), using spammy techniques means that your service will skew toward the bottom of the market that actually "falls" for these techniques (poor and illiterate) early on and actually scare away early adapters for multiple reasons.
5) In the short term, Path's metrics will look really good, but in the long term it could result in serious problems, least of which will be another news story with FTC settlement in it.
However, if the story is indeed cut and dry:
1) Path sent messages that qualify as spam both because they had no permission to send them and they were false.
2) If this was intentional, this should be a red flag to investors not just of the company but the kind of people that run it.
3) This is nothing new. Tagged did the same thing, with e-mail, which to some degree falls afoul of less laws than using text messages or the telephone (other commentators pointed out that land line carriers convert SMS to voice calls, which is news to me.)
4) Using spammy methods to acquire users is a red flag for any web service. While arguably Facebook used and uses extremely aggressive e-mail notifications (sending out an e-mail for every minor thing, and whenever a new feature is added opting in the user to receive notifications by default), using spammy techniques means that your service will skew toward the bottom of the market that actually "falls" for these techniques (poor and illiterate) early on and actually scare away early adapters for multiple reasons.
5) In the short term, Path's metrics will look really good, but in the long term it could result in serious problems, least of which will be another news story with FTC settlement in it.