There’s a new social network just launched today, Path.  It refers to itself as a ‘personal network’ as a way to diffentiate against Twitter. And it is a very different kind of social networks; users are limited to 50 friends!

The number is based on the psychology theories that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships any human can handle.  “Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal,” said Dave Morin, on the company’s blog. “Path is a place where you can be yourself.”

Path has set out to launch a suite of applications, including the iPhone app launched today, which will  focus on intimate photo sharing. There are no comments or other sharing  features that people who use social networks might expect.

As a small start up, Path gets more attention than most because the team behind it includes key players from Facebook, Macster and Napster.  As such the company was able to  raise significant seed funding from well-known business angels.

Will it catch on?  I’m not so sure.  It seems to me that Facebook’s secret groups has this space covered.  And, interestingly Path’s own website has a prominent ‘follow me on Twitter’ link.

But then again, I’m the one that said people would never pay good money for bottled tap water.

Related posts:

• How not to hold a Tweetup
• Pew study: Boomers flock to social networks
• Gartner’s 2010 Hype Cycle for social software

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