Path has acquired messaging app TalkTo to get involved in messaging.
The social media company purchased the app rather than create its own messaging service, according to PC Magazine.
"Our vision expanded beyond thinking of messaging as just another way to send a photo or text," Dave Morin, CEO of Path, said in a blog post.
"We wanted to go deeper, to think of messaging as not just a new and more personal way to communicate with the people in your life, but as a more personal way to communicate with everything in your life," he added.
TalkTo allows users to ask questions to stores and restaurants through text message. No specific details of the deal were revealed, but the agreement has been rumored to be a combination of cash and stock, BetaBoston reported.
The service, founded by Venetica founder Stuart Levinson and Riley Crane of the MIT Media Lab, was created as a way for people to use texting to ask local retail stores questions about prices and product availability, as well as make restaurant reservations.
TalkTo will be added to Path Talk, Path's new Place Messaging feature, later this summer, PC Magazine reported.
"We're still obsessed with making it easier to communicate with all the people, places and things in your life," Levinson, CEO, and Crane, CTO, wrote a separate blog post. "With the launch of Path Talk, we've found the perfect way to pull it off."
Path Talk will have a variety of features, such as automatically erasing messages from Path's servers 24 hours after they are sent, as well as automatically notifying user's friends when they are on their way to a location, low on battery, or in the same neighborhood, BetaBoston reported.
The app will also allow users to send friends music, movies, maps, books and high quality videos and pictures. Users will also be able to send responses to messages from friends quickly and easily, and can send and receive voice messages to individuals or groups.
While people currently registered to TalkTo can keep using the service as normal, new users can download Path Talk before the update. The update will be available in the U.S. and Canada at a later date.
Path is a free service and is available to download in Google Play Store and the iTunes App Store.
