Social networking app Path, launched in 2010 and once touted as a possible Facebook competitor, announced it will shut down next month.

“Over the years we have tried to lay out our mission: through technology and design we aim to be a source of happiness, meaning, and connection to our users,” it said in a blog post, adding: “it is now inevitable to wind down the service to prioritise our work to serve you with better products and services.”

The app will be removed from the App Store and Google Play on 1 October though users have until 18 October to download a copy of their data.

Path was founded by Dave Morin, former Facebook product manager, Dustin Mierau and Shawn Fanning, who previously worked at Napster. A TechCrunch report stated Facebook “aggressively borrowed elements from Path’s design back in the day,” including a popular Facebook feature called reactions.

The app launched with a focus on being visually appealing and, with a limit of 50 friends per user, initally marketed itself as having a more intimate setting than Facebook. However, later this limit was removed.

In its early days, Google attempted to acquire the app for $100 million. Five years ago the company raised $50 million in a Series C funding round, which valued it at $500 million.

However, it was not able to keep up with competition and, despite being sold to South Korea-based Kakao in 2015 (which wanted to leverage its popualirty in Indonesia), it never managed to build a strong user base.