One of the most famous Estonian technology entrepreneurs, Allan Martinson (pictured) and the former CEO of Delfi, Andrus Raudsalu have formed a team of five people and registered a startup called Inner Circle.

Their aim is to establish a new social network, much like Facebook, but lot more private, crap-free (without the FarmVille and who’s your friend’s friend reminders and all the other annoying things) and easier to use.

Martinson says that 95 percent of all the communication currently takes place in smaller groups: among family, collegues, friends, hobby groups, training mates etc. Facebook is extremely popular, with hundreds of millions of users (over 200 000 in Estonia already), it has a plentitude of functionality, but Facebook is not the best communication tool for smaller groups. 

„Facebook has lists and groups, but they are inconvenient to use. Everyone is your „friend“, irrespective of how they became your fiends,“ Martinson says.

In the new soon-to-be revealed environment of Inner Circle, currently in rough beta phase, the users will be able to switch in between different groups with ease, share content, information,  multimedia – in other words do all the modern social communication things – separately in each of their group. 

Head of the project, Andrus Raudsalu calls it „the private Facebook“ and says it will be useable over different communication platforms: the web, e-mail, SMS, mobile etc. He considers mailing lists and groups as the main competitors.

Social networks serving small groups are becoming more and more trendy these days. About ten projects worldwide are currently in development, but non of them has yet clearly taken the lead.

Perhaps at some point in Autumn, when the project will be launched, Inner Circle is planning to target US market and other English-speaking markets. Revenues have to come from advertising and freemium group-services.

Martinson and Raudsalu expect to see hundreds of thousands of groups established in their environment by the end of 2011.  If the target is not met, feasibility comes under question.

In August Martinson and his partners will raise around 200 000 euros seed capital for their new ambitious project.