There are few things more exciting for a small team than finally sharing many months of hard work—and today we get to do just that. We’re proud to introduce Path Talk, a new messenger from Path.

Early last year we introduced messaging as part of our social networking app, Path. Since then it has become our fastest growing feature. You have told us time and again how important messaging is to you, and so we’ve expanded Path messaging into its own app to be easier for you to use. We’ve also added some great features that we haven’t seen in another messaging product that we think will make it easier for you to communicate with your friends, family, classmates, and co-workers.

Our goal with Path Talk is to make a more personal messaging experience. We believe real life conversations aren’t recorded permanently, and so neither are the messages you send with Talk. We believe that messaging is all about the here and now, and so we’ve built a new kind of status into Talk we call Ambient Status.

Through Ambient Status, Talk can automatically let your friends know when you’re in transit, in the neighborhood, and even low on battery. We’ve pioneered this new kind of context to reduce misunderstandings in a world where messaging has become a primary method of communication.

Conversations in Path Talk have all the same great features that you’ve come to know and love in Path: text, groups, photos, voice, maps, music, movies, books, video, and stickers. And with Path Talk we’re expanding conversations with Quick Replies.

Use Quick Replies to nudge a friend, acknowledge a message, or start a call—all without ever using a keyboard. We’ve built Quick Replies right into Talk’s messages list too, so you can ping a friend with just a swipe.

Messaging is a way of communicating with everyone in your life. So we’ve built Path Talk to work great for you when communicating with anyone, whether you’re close friends, family, co-workers, classmates— Path Talk just works.

And this functionality carries over to the changes we’re unveiling in our sharing app Path as well. With this update we’re lifting the 150 friend limit to give you the freedom to decide who and how many are in your network. We’ve been testing this change with some passionate users for months and have found that, while most people still want to connect with just 50 friends, others may choose to add 500 (and use Inner Circle to share moments with just their closest of friends). We’re putting the controls in your hands.

Speaking of controls, Path has been redesigned to make sharing and navigating even more simple. We’ve taken the navigation out of drawers and placed it front-and-center on the bottom of your Path feed. And even though Path Talk is now a separate app, it’s only a tap away.

Path Talk is available today for both Android and iOS. Whether it’s sharing memories on Path or living in the moment on Path Talk, we hope you enjoy.

- Dave, Dustin, and the Path Team