Is the future of social 'personal'?

With the launch of Path last week - the 'personal' social network - I've heard discussion around 'personal' being the new social. I'm not so sure.

OK, Path limits you to 50 friends with the philosophy that it connects you to your closest contacts/friends. And I get the logic that it's hard to have a more than a superficial connection with 150+ people, as on Facebook.

But, I think Path will have difficulties because of the amount of information you need to hand over - phone number, mailing address - and its lack of functionality.

OK, I may trust my 50 closest contacts with that information, but I'm afraid I do not trust, what is essentially a marketing organisation, not to abuse my data.

It's functionality seems very limited. You share photos, but that's about it. There is no two way friend type relationships, no likes, no comments, no photo editing features, no invite a friend function.

On first glance, I'm not convinced. Still, Path has been founded by Dave Morin, ex Apple and Facebook, and Shawn Fanning, the co-founder of Napster. Both are a helluva a lot smarter than me, so what do I know?