New Social Network Limits Friends to 50

Founders believe people will share even more
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 15, 2010 1:54 PM CST
New Social Network Limits Friends to 50
The Path homepage is shown.   (Path.com)

If you were moved by Jimmy Kimmel's recent push for a National Unfriend Day, you should be glad to hear this news: New social network Path launches today, and it limits you to your nearest and dearest 50 friends. Path's limit is in keeping with the work of evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who famously theorized that you can only maintain close relationships with 150 people—and of those, you probably only trust 50 of them, NPR notes.

Developed by a former Facebook exec and a Napster co-founder, the photo-centric service's founders believe that Facebook users aren't divulging everything to their 5,000 friends, and will share more if their number of connections is limited—though they're not pitching it as a Facebook replacement, but as something meant to "ride alongside" other networks. It launches as an iPhone app that allows users to find friends using email addresses or phone numbers, then snap, post, and tag photos to create a "path" of your life, the Los Angeles Times reports.
(More social networking stories.)

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