Facebook is a behemoth of a social network. The mother of all social networks. The largest social network on the planet with over 600 million members. While most still believe there’s another social network waiting to take over, one we’ve probably never heard of, my gut feeling is – in the era of one social network for all – Facebook has won.
What Apple is banking on however is that era will soon end and be replaced with a plethora of niche social networks, each giving its users a space to share and communicate with like-minded passionates.
What’s more, where Facebook and Google bank of the future of web based applications, Apple believes its desktop and local mobile applications with http connections to the web that will dominate in the years ahead.
I’m quite happy to admit this is largely conjecture, but a look at Apple’s recent social networking moves should help prove I haven’t simply pulled this out of thin air.
Game Center and Ping have both already launched, each with its own focus; gaming and music respectively. Today we also learnt of a ‘Find my Friends’ feature in the latest iOS 4.3 beta. You can be certain that Apple is venturing into the geo-location sphere, most likely as a feature of the its social networks rather than a location based social network in itself.
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What other Apple social networks are around the corner? We can only speculate. But with Apple’s design and media pedigree, it isn’t far fetched an idea to consider a Photo/Media sharing social network to launch before long. With Ping in iTunes, will we see Apple’s photo social network attempt launch in iPhoto?
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