Touting the original `exclusivity' aspect that popular social network Facebook was first predicated on, a San Francisco firm called Path is soon launching its exclusive social networking service, which it is billing as a "personal network."

While Facebook clearly is somewhat overcrowded - even with the new Groups feature -, Path is offering certain level of stringency, which was initially associated with Facebook when it started as a network that helped Harvard students to connect with one another.

Noting that on Path a user can have a maximum of 50 friends in all, the company's team behind the network wrote on the official website: "The personal network doesn't replace your existing social networks-it augments them."

Referring to the observation by evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar, that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at any given time, the team said that Path allows each user to designate only 50 friends.

Saying that Path is betting on the assumption that people long for more private interaction with a much smaller social circle, Dave Morin, a former Facebook and Apple executive, has estimated that, going by Dunbar's research,
50 is "roughly the outer boundary of our personal networks."

Morin further added that Path is essentially designed to help people capture moments and share them only with people they trust; and that Path is meant to "ride alongside" Facebook and other social networking services, rather than replacing them.