@rrhoover Ryan, as I mentioned in our launch of switching into a world of Multi-App, we believe that this is the best way to deliver certain core functionality to users. In the case of messaging, we had two goals: first we wanted to make it easier for users to access messaging rather than having to click three times to get to it in in Path. Second, because we had the opportunity to now do messaging as it's own app, we wanted to take that opportunity to re-imagine messaging. To completely think different about messaging. We started to ask the question: why can't you message anything in your life? Messaging is the killer app of the Internet. It is the most ubiquitous, most common experience that everyone in the world on a mobile phone has experienced, and loves. Why couldn't we make it possible to message anything? To go beyond people into other parts of your life? To simplify your communications with the people, places, and things in your life into one messaging hub? To bring you closer to the people and places you care about? What if it was not just about who you can message but what you can message? It was in the search through these questions that we met @stuartlevinson, @rileycrane, and the team at TalkTo...and ultimately decided to come together to make the bigger vision a reality. We couldn't be more excited to be launching just 1% of what we think is possible today with Path Talk now backed by our global team of Path Agents.

@thekenyeung thanks for the awesome questions. I'll do them one at a time: Q: Is your intention to have Path Talk to run independently of the Path social network? Specifically, for new users to talk to brands/businesses, will they need to sign up for a Path account (a la Google+)? Is that necessarily the optimal way to go? A: The idea behind multiple apps is that it gives us the ability to re-imagine what were previously buried features in the core Path app into entirely new experiences for users. I talk about this a bit above in Ryan's question. For now, users will have to download Path Talk to use the functionality, but our goal is to provide this through an SMS short code, as well as through APIs so that anyone can integrate the functionality into anything they would like. We have a few pilots going with ecommerce sites that wanted to integrate a widget on their site. More on that coming soon. Q: Also, how will conversations be used to improve the user experience? Specifically by way of recommendations? engagement? Will brands and businesses see when you're nearby and check out your Path profile? A: 70+% of the questions that people ask have purchasing intent. So, you can imagine that we will be able to do some amazing things by way of helping users get exactly what they want. Our goal is to do just that, we want to deliver happiness to our users and help them get what they want. Over time I think this will take various different forms, but our goal is always to deliver a deeply personal experience, the highest quality service, and to fiercely protect your privacy along the way. Q: Path, at least for me, has been symbolic of a service that's truly intimate and that I can share content with close friends and family. But this new Path appears to be more about a person's journey, rather than social networking. Am I completely off base here? A: A bit part of everyone's personal life, the moments they spend with close friends and family happen at local businesses all around America. The restaurants and local stores in our lives are as much a part of our lives as our homes in some cases. Yet, the relationship you have with the local business in your life remains cold and distant in a lot of cases. Our hope with Path Talk Places is that we can make that relationship more personal again by putting it in the palm of your hand, in the same place that you have the relationships with your close friends and family: messaging. In the end, we hope this brings you closer to those local businesses.

@davemorin thanks for the answers. If I may, I have a few more to follow up with... Let's say that anyone can download Path Talk but in order to use it, I'll need to have a Path account, right? So you have an idea of how you'll be converting these users to full Path app users? What markets are you in that people can use this Path Talk? Is it just in San Francisco? Or worldwide? Will agents be around 24/7? You spoke about payments...how will Path make money from this? For every purchase, will Path get a percentage?

@thekenyeung more below: Q: Let's say that anyone can download Path Talk but in order to use it, I'll need to have a Path account, right? So you have an idea of how you'll be converting these users to full Path app users? A: Yes, right now we have a unified identity across both Path and Path Talk. The idea being that if you want to sign up for Path, it is a super simple one click process. However, we have designed both apps so that you can use one or the other independently, you don't need to be a user of both and you don't have to. We want to provide a lot of choice to users in which of our experiences they want to have in their life. Q: What markets are you in that people can use this Path Talk? Is it just in San Francisco? Or worldwide? Will agents be around 24/7? A: It is available in America and Canada currently. Yes, Path Agents are available 24/7. Q: You spoke about payments...how will Path make money from this? For every purchase, will Path get a percentage? A: As I mentioned above, 70% of our questions include purchasing intent. So, we see a lot of opportunity in helping you get what you want, when you want, as fast as possible. More to come in the future. But, you can count on everything we do being focused on the customer first.

@jmj you are right, we see a lot of booking reservations. But, other big use cases (which we currently handle) are finding products at local stores, as well as making important appointments. There are a lot of use cases which we don't handle right now for various reasons, some are currently too complex (like large phone mazes), others involve levels of personal information which we are not comfortable handling yet, and still others involve actual payments. The list goes on, but we like to keep it secret so as to surprise and delight you with time savers in the future.

@davemorin Thanks for the reply. Proud of you guys on the release and will be using the product!

@ShaanVP Thanks Shaan! Really appreciate it. We thought the same thing. When we were starting the process of re-imagining messaging we kept asking ourselves the question: why can't you message anything? Including the places that are just as much a part of your everyday life as your friends and family?

@jedgar John, yes. This is version one and is table stakes. Our intention is to add full controls for the time period of your choice in our next few releases. Stay tuned.

@shauntrennery We are ready to scale. The magic of the TalkTo technology and the scaling process is the key special sauce here. Right now, we are scaled to handle any level of demand from North America.