Sean M Everett

I’ve been extolling the virtues of what I call (e)motion (i.e., motion + emotion) for a bit now and finally, we have a company who gets it. The chart below is from this 40-page deck on Consumer Behavior & Virality that I wrote, and represents a concept similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The startup that gets it, and incorporated it into it’s complete redesign of their service is Path.

Path 2.0 for the iPhone has been blowing up the internets this week because it took the concepts of (e)motion and applied it to invisible software.  For example, upon opening the app after traveling from Dallas to New York City, it automatically sensed that I was in a new location and updated my Path accordingly with a little plane icon.

In addition, they way you add a new moment to Path is by clicking an animated ‘+’ button that explodes out a spinning menu of icons (e.g., location, picture, thought, message, mood, etc).  That’s the motion half of (e)motion.  The concept was so popular that someone even wrote an open-source library for using it in your own iPhone app (click the link to see an animation).

The other half, emotion, is created through the use of smileys that you click to comment on other’s status updates.  The other way they do this is through the art of storytelling.  Think of Pixar.  How many times have you teared up watching a poignant scene in Toy Story, WALL-E, or Up?  They’re trying to do something similar with the poignant moments in our own lives, where you can share these private moments with a small group of your most trusted friends and family.

Together, they’re the only ones I’ve even come across who hit the (e)motion nail on it’s head, and in the process raised the bar for every other startup and consumer-focused app.

Finally, if you’re looking for a little more private emotional outlet in your life, check out CONFIDE.