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he emphasis on subscriptions represents a gamble for a company that has seen a surge in its number of registered users this year, even as it has been pilloried over the unwanted texts and robocalls that it used to acquire them.

Path says it has 20 million users, bolstered by pre-installation deals with carriers around the world, though the company won’t say how many of them use the app each month.

Subscription fees represent a way for Path to stay free of advertising, one of the company's core aims since it launched in 2010.

rolled out Path’s first real revenue-generating feature with a shop for premium emoji-like “stickers.”

in the first 24 hours after the 3.0 launch, Path made more money than it had in its entire lifetime as a company, total (starting with its 2.0 version, Path has collected affiliate revenue from media sales generated in the app.)

universally lauded as beautifully designed and thoughtful, but has been criticized for possibly not quite making a big enough dent outside of the early adopter crowd.

Path was originally conceived as a companion network to Facebook for people to enjoy higher engagement with a smaller number of quality friends and contacts. It specifically limited users to 150 in-network connections as a tip of the hat to Dunbar's number, an idea in anthropology stating human brain size is such that we can only support meaningful relationships with 150 people.

Path today is largely irrelevant to mainstream US consumers and has become an afterthought among Silicon Valley investors and employees

The app ranks 5th among social media apps in Indonesia (10th overall), 15th in Niger (148th overall), and 17th in Saudi Arabia (79th overall), but nowhere else does it crack the Top 20.

show a company catering to this emerging market audience with features like sticker packs that are less likely to translate in North America and Europe.

Ello revealed on Thursday that it raised $5.5 million in a Series A funding round. The company also announced that it has become a legal public benefit corporation, or PBC.

Ello raised $435,000 in seed funding from Vermont-based FreshTracks Capital in March. Its new Series A round is led by FreshTracks and two Boulder-based groups: Bullet Time Ventures (an investor in Jukely, a live event recommendation service) and Foundry Group (which invested in fitness tracking firm FitBit and crowdfunded apparel retailer Betabrand).

It’s worth noting that a number of brands, such as Netflix and Sonos, have created Ello pages. As digital strategist Ben Breier writes, branded content is a form of advertising.