Minimalist iPhone-Based Social Network Allows Only 50 Contacts

A new social network called Path was released yesterday for the iPhone. Developed by Dave Morin, a ex-Facebook employee, the network will cap the number of ‘friends’ a user can have to fifty, with the 5 closest contacts in an intimate circle.

Presently, Path only allows communication through photo images, so that the user will be able to truly share daily moments with his closest group of people, without being accused of ostentation or self-promotion.

While creating his new social network, Morin was highly influenced by the works by two experts in the field of evolutionary anthropology and economics respectively.

Wired reports:

He [Dave Morin] was drawn to the work of evolutionary anthropologist R.I.M. Dunbar, whose work on the primate neocortex suggested that brain size limits the number of close connections. Dunbar has recently been scientifically frolicking in the anthropological gold mine of Facebook and has revealed his early findings that digitally, as well as in the real world, our species is incapable of managing an “inner circle” of more than 150 friends. That increment became known as “Dunbar’s Number.”

This led Morin, who left Facebook early this year, to conclude that his new startup would put a limit on connections so that users would have “a quality network.” Proceeding on another Dunbar theory — that the rings of our social networks ripple out in factors of three — he and his team created what Path calls The Personal Network. Morin calculates 5 closest friends of relatives in the most intimate circle, fifteen or so who we have regular contact with, and around three times that in the boundary of who is truly trusted. That led him to put a limit of fifty to one’s Path network, all of whom have consented to a reciprocal relationship.

The second idea came from Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-winning economist who has studied the nature of memories, particularly their relationship to happiness. Hearing Kahneman speak at this year’s TED Conference led Morin to make Path into “a giving network, not a taking network.” Instead of professional networking or cracker barrel punditry, the purpose of Path would be to capture the daily “moments” that convey joy, particularly when the recipient of those posts knows what they mean to the person expressing them.

Path for iPhone

Wired: “The ‘Path’ to Social Network Serenity Is Lined With 50 Friends”