How to make a dijkstra longest path?

How would you make Path better than Instagram?

• I'll give you my opinions here on how to make Path better than http://Instagr.am, but would love your opinions too. Disclosure: I don't currently like Path, even though I use it nearly every day.

• Answer:

  First, a disclosure. I don't really like the iPhone-photo-sharing-service Path, but, for the same reason I often eat Brussel Sprouts (I don't like those either) I try Path nearly every day and have some strong opinions about what would make it better. Here they are: 1. DO NOT GET RID OF THE 50-FRIEND LIMIT. That might shock you, but this is a key differentiator of Path. Originally I didn't like the limit, but now can see some value in it. BUT, see #2. 2. ONE LIST OF 50 IS NOT ENOUGH. Hell, I invited 150 people to a party I co-hosted last night. So, one list of 50 is laughably too small. But what if they gave us 50 lists of 50 each? THAT would be very useful, and would help us build really interesting social graphs that would have real meaning. I'd put my family on one. Close friends another. Coworkers another. VCs I like another. Journalists I like another. And so on, and so forth. I'd even like to trade lists with other people to see their photos. 3. GOTTA BE ON MORE THAN IPHONE. My brother Ben? Android. My brother Alex? Blackberry. My best friend Luke? Palm or Android. You getting the problem yet? The key differentiator of Path is having your really close family and friends on it, but it's impossible for even the biggest geek in Silicon Valley to do that if it's iPhone only. 4. GOTTA HAVE BETTER ONBOARDING OF FRIENDS. I watch "normal people" use computers now and they live in Facebook all day long. They have their family, their friends there, and more. Yet Path makes us go to Gmail to onboard our family and friends. Instagram's friend onboarding is so much better it isn't funny. This makes apps go viral. If you can't find your friends easily, and can't get their latest email address (you would be shocked how out of date many emails in my Gmail are compared to Facebook -- I used Facebook to invite everyone to that party and compared just to see) then you'll grow slower and slower growth is gonna kill you eventually. 5. GOTTA HAVE A WAY TO TELL CONTEXT BEHIND A PHOTO. I see all sorts of photos in Path, but the lame tagging system they decided on just isn't satisfying. I'd really like comments so I could ask MG just why he took that photo in the Apple store today. But I can't. I can't even see his email, phone numbers, or texting numbers, like I can in, say, Foursquare. It's amazing that Path isn't building on top of what's worked in other apps. 6. MAKE USE OF LOCATION PATHS. For instance, why can't I see MG Siegler's "path" of where all his photos were shot? Why can't I compare my locations to  his? Why can't we leave photos at specific locations for others? 7. LET ME SEE EVERYONE WHO VISITS A PHOTO, NOT JUST THOSE I'VE FRIENDED. One of the coolest features in Path is whenever someone looks at one of my photos their icon shows up beneath their photo. But, here's where they ruined a way to find new friends. Let's say that Dave Morin is a friend of MG Siegler's, but not a friend of mine but MG is a friend of mine. Why doesn't Dave's icon show up when he views one of MG's photos? That would be really cool, because then I could really see who is viewing MG's photos and who is active. I might actually take Ashton Kutcher off of my list, because he never looks at my photos, and put Dave on, because I can see he's very active on the service. That'd help us all reward activity and also find more cool friends to add to our Paths. 8. LET US PUBLICLY SHARE SOME PHOTOS. I find that I almost always reach for Instagram, even if it's possible the photo I take will only be interesting to my wife. Why? Because there's a CHANCE that it'll turn into something we both want to share publicly. It's happened before. With Instagram I have a few choices. I can really make a photo public by pushing it to Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter (mine are at http://scobleizer.tumblr.com ) or I can make them semi public by keeping them only inside Instagram (I already have 4,000 followers there, so it's not really private, but it's not as hyper public as the other places -- at least not yet -- because you will only see them if you use Instagram and you are following me). Or, I could mark my account as private and then approve who will see them. With Path I don't have the first two choices. Only the 50 people you are sharing with (and no more) can see your Path photos. I'm glad that tonight they gave me one of my wishes: the ability to pull photos out of the library instead of only off the camera. Hopefully that will let us use other apps to add filters, or fun effects, which will help us make photos a social object. So, how would you make Path better than Instagram? And, I have some ideas about how to make Instagram even better than it is, but will have to save those for another evening. Path is at http://path.com Instagram is at http://instagr.am