Cloud computing? Quantum photo filters? Uber for dogs? You're over-thinking the tech world, says Dave Morin—all he needs to turn his super-niche Facebook alternative into a winner is for you to buy stickers. Virtual stickers.

In an interview with the WSJ, Morin says his app's past of obscurity and privacy abuse are over. Now Path's adding "a million" users a week—a little hard to believe, unless Morin is tapping his old coworkers at Apple for promotional aid—and maybe even making money. The WSJ's Matt Lynley points to a perplexing chart from AppData, a metrics-gathering firm that's also a little hard to believe.

But what's most dubious of all here is the notion that Path's new "stickers" feature—basically, the ability to paste pictures of smiley faces eating hamburgers and shit—are going to be the app's Next Big Thing.

Lynley, charitably, asks Morin to explain why a fad from the 90s will translate into 21st century anything:

WSJ: What’s prompting the growth? Messaging?

DM: [...] Messaging itself is really fast, and we have really fun stickers.

WSJ: How’s the stickers business going?

DM: It’s increasing every day, but we’re new to it. We didn’t really understand it and designed it with a lot of assumptions, but it’s doing quite well. We’re rolling out new stickers every week.

WSJ: Why do you think we’re seeing a kind of “renaissance” in messaging?


No point in pasting any more from the interview, because once you equate IMing pixelated stickers with a "renaissance in messaging," it's time to close the tab. [WSJ]