A new social network startup has been getting a lot of attention. It is called Path – the Personal Network. Hmm, personal? Does this not translate to anti-social?

Path is a San Francisco-based startup with some high profile employees from the tech industry. Dave Morin, who helped build Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform, left the company this year to start his own venture and be the company’s CEO. Shawn Fanning, the co-founder of Napster, is also heavily involved in the project. Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, is an investor.

The Path Blog issued a statement conceptualising their network,

“Path is the personal network.  A place to be yourself and share life with close friends and family. The personal network doesn’t replace your existing social networks – it augments them.

Path allows you to capture your life’s most personal moments and share them with the 50 closest friends and family in your life who matter most.

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. Path is a place where you can be yourself.”

A concept that makes it unique: You're limited to 50 friends.  Yes, 50 (and no more than 50) of your closest friends.

This magical number of 50 was based on the research of Robin Dunbar, an Oxford professor of evolutionary psychology, claims that the average human can only maintain about 150 stable relationships. For some reason, Dave Morin decided we can have no more than 50.

Apparently, there is such a thing as having too many friends and I think this is the problem Path team is trying to solve. When you follow hundreds and hundreds of people on Twitter, or have more “friends” on Facebook than you could actually know, you lose the closeness that those networks intend you to have with the people that you care about.

And what else is new on path: Path lets you know who's seen your photos. That's not possible with Facebook, but another social media service, LinkedIn, lets you know who's seen your profile, so it's not entirely new.

And now I’m wondering if Path will catch on. Aren’t there too many social networks already? Isn't any newcomer going to have trouble competing against that 500-million-user Facebook? And Path's 50-friend limit... It is their differetiator, but is it their advantage? Time will tell.