Visible Path announced a new, free version of its business networking service, for business professionals. Anyone with a company email address can start an individual or company network powered by Visible Path.

The free service, available in a beta, is built on a new technical foundation that incorporates Visible Path’s legacy of supporting private corporate networks and introduces features aimed at individual subscribers. In particular, subscribers can: Launch their private social network within minutes from www.visiblepath.com; Connect with other work colleagues; Invite close contacts outside their company into their network; Control their individual privacy settings; Scan relationship data from emails, contact cards, calendars and more; View “first degree” relationships ranked by relationship strength; Lookup contacts in a intelligent address book that aggregates contact information; Search for meaningful connections through the network to people they’d like to reach and; Request introductions or background info from people connected to people they want to reach.

Unlike most social networking sites and business networking communities, Visible Path is a service to help business people manage their real-life network and apply their network to their daily work. Visible Path applies unique social network algorithms that automatically rate relationship strength to drive new levels of success, efficiency and trust in professionals’ social networks. Connections are limited to contacts and colleagues that know each other well; introductions and requests are optimally routed through the strongest paths.