OP-ED COLUMN
By Gonzo
Scientists and philosophers say there are many possible futures. Which one we end up with depends on the actions we take in the here and now. But there are some things that seem inevitable even before they happen and I think the coming explosion of social mobile technology is one of those.
Cell phones have one of the fastest adoption rates of any technology, ever. They are common in third world countries where people don’t have access to safe drinking water or reliable electricity. Humanity’s need to communicate with one another is an unalterable part of our being and the mobile phone seems to encapsulate and extend that trait.
So it should be no surprise that social networking services are beginning to migrate to the mobile world. There are nascent services for different phones, but the iPhone has sparked a revolution with its cool new user interface, which allows for more complex applications because of its large touch-screen.
Case in point may be a new social network (unnamed at this point, but some are saying it’ll be called iPhone Social) recently revealed by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. The network is iPhone-specific and seems ready to change the way people interact forever. Meeting new people will be as easy as checking your phone for people in your geographic area who want to meet.
The software uses the iPhone’s ability to triangulate your location to figure out who’s nearby. You can specify what type of relationship you’re interested in, whether it’s dating, business networking or friendship and broadcast a few basic details about yourself. Of course, it can be turned off when you don’t want to be interrupted by fellow iPhone Social users.
Walking into a meeting might be a whole new experience; if everyone is broadcasting contact information what is the point of business cards? Just add them to your business network.
There are existing mobile-friendly networks out there: Facebook has an iPhone-specific version, but it doesn’t truly leverage mobile technology; it’s just a crippled version of Facebook that fits nicely in the iPhone’s screen. With a heavily compartmentalized series of networks and no GPS/triangulation ability Facebook is too regimented for meeting random strangers. Into that gap steps iFob, an iPhone-based social beacon (it works on laptops too). iFob lets you know when you’re near other iFob users, but there’s no social network behind the software.
When the mobile beacon and the social network are combined the gates to the future of mobile social networking will be opened. Will loneliness be erased from our lives like a nasty computer virus? I wouldn’t go that far. But if you look closely you can see signs that we are destined to live far more social and mobile lives than we can even begin to imagine today.