3 Predictions about Apple’s Social Software Future

Joshua Porter offers his musings on how Apple would/should/could evolve in 3 fronts. I quote liberally from here.

On iPhone

"imagine if Apple recorded (not necessarily the audio, but the metadata of the call) all the calls we make and store that information in our .Mac account (assuming you’re still subscribed, of course). With our phone connected to a .Mac account, lots of other things become possible. You could phone-to-text message, much like is happening at Twittr (not that this is the ideal model, but recording text messages on a web page in a similar way). You could look at call histories, giving a clear picture of our calling habits, how many minutes we’ve used up, and who we’re talking to. You could have chat and blogging built in, as is happening with Leopard to some extent already.

All of this would essentially lead to a “phone profile”, much like a social-networking profile, where we could connect with our friends to do *any* sort of messaging we want. Voice, voice-text, web-text, chat…all in one central location. "

You may refer to danah boyd for fresh and compelling insights on social networks.

On iTunes

"... as it currently exists, lacks social features that it desperately needs to face its future competition.

xxx

What people can’t find out, and what is crucial to music and movie sharing, is knowing what your trusted social groups are listening and watching. iTunes lacks a way for people to know what their friends and family are currently enjoying. This is where most of our recommendations come from. iTunes could benefit greatly from a recommendation service based not only on what people listen to and watch, but also what trusted people are doing."

I wonder if Zune (a competing product from Microsoft) is getting it right.

On podcasting

"I think podcasting will really take off when it becomes smaller, more discrete, and more social. When we can subscribe to our friend’s podcast and listen to their two-minute message today, not just some deeply-engaging half hour show."

Now does this qualify?