So the new iPhone App Store launched yesterday, and the new 3G phone will be released in the next hour or so (this is in case you’ve been in a cave.) It seems you fall into 1 of two camps, either you are someone giving their 2 cents about the new iPhone release, or you are tired of hearing about it. Being an iPhone owner already, I was more tired of hearing about it and I really wanted to leave well enough alone, but I couldn’t help but notice something interesting as I browsed the various applications available to iPhone users. Social networking applications were all over the place.

There were the obvious Facebook and Myspace apps, which were to be expected. But the volume of new and/or location based social networking apps floored me. As someone who lives in social media all day, I have to admit that while at times I’m excited by Twitter (and it’s offshoot services like Twellow or Summize,) I think that social media is maturing and ready for expansion across wider demographics. It seems at times that the innovation phase of social media has passed. It seems that the iPhone will generate a whole new level of energy around social networking.

3 of the top 10 free apps were social networking related. Twitterific was pretty prominently marketed on the iTunes main page, and the “What’s Hot” section on the App Store page. What did surprise me was the lack of blogging related apps, which seem to be a perfect fit for the iPhone. There has been a tremendous buzz in the advertising and marketing world around “location based” social networking, and mobile advertising/marketing as being the next big wave - which seems logical just based on the direction technology is going. But I didn’t see it until today. The addition of GPS and social networking apps in the 3G iPhone have delivered the power-punch for marketers dying to get their ads in the hands of consumers on the go.

You can be sick and tired of hearing about the new iPhone, and by the end of next week we probably all will be, but don’t miss the very obvious signals that the app store is sending us. Mobile social networking is about to go crazy.

Tags: iphone, mobile-networks, Social Media Marketing

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 6:02 am and is filed under Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.