The iPhone and Social Networking

Social Networking February 24, 2008

Because of the versatility of the iPhone - email, web-browsing, photos, YouTube, contact information, to-do lists, etc. we now have the ability to have everything we need at our fingertips as we walk around the world.

However, although we can view websites with the iPhone just as we would on a computer, and although there have been websites specially made for iPhones to allow for better interactivity, we're lacking on the social-networking end.

It seems reasonable that with such a highly portable device that's always connected to the Internet, that we could devise a system whereby social-networking, currently strictly in an online zone from one computer screen to another, transitions into the real world as a fusion of the Internet and reality.

Social Networking is about connecting people through the Internet in a multitude of ways: blogs, photos, videos, profile information, etc. But how do we take these ideas to the mobile platform?

Currently, the iPhone is really nothing more than a simpler and portable version of your Mac. All the programs like Mail, Calendar, Notes, etc. sync to your computer so that you can essentially take all the important stuff on your Mac with you when you leave (without having to carry around a laptop). But I think that we're forgetting the potential that having a mini-computer mobile device with fast online capabilities has.

Consider an idea that was mentioned at the Apple Intern Contest over the summer that I attended, whereby iPhones would be able to recognize other iPhones in local areas and pinpoint their locations. For example, suppose you were walking into your local Starbucks and your iPhone connected to your friend's since he happened to be a block away. You might integrate this feature with GoogleMaps, allowing you to locate your friends as you zoom around different parts of the country.

Additionally, you might want to swap photos and music with other friends' iPhones. Suddenly the device becomes a public extension of yourself - allowing you to share all sorts of data with anyone around you. The phone could receive periodic updated information retrieved from the internet, not just RSS feeds from blogs, but perhaps RSS-like feeds from people's current statuses.

(PS I'm not limiting the networking idea to friends only - you could connect to all kinds of people, whether it be for simply social, business or dating purposes.)

Application Design

Expect that once the SDK is released, there'll be a flurry of Internet-accessed "desktop" applications that play on this idea of new mobile social networking. Design-wise, however, we still only have a 320 x 460 viewport for iPhone desktop apps and a smaller 320 x 356 viewport for iPhone web applications. This means we can't have any overcomplicated designs, so the question becomes how developers are to pack in extreme functionality in a very minimalist design.

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