What If Apple Created A Social Networking Application???

WHOA TechCrunch, slow down, there’s a question mark at the end of that heading! More and more I’ve been trying to make sense of the various news and social networking outlets I frequent on an hourly basis. Sure, you’ve got your Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts to worry about but throw in your favorite RSS filter/reader and you could spend an entire day plugged into the internet and never read the same thing twice. It can be a bit overwhelming. We are slowly inching towards a Matrix reality where we are jacked into the internet, learning ju-jitsu in 10 seconds, and then fighting an African-American mentor in a digital dojo. Some think it terrifying, but I think it’s exciting!

So I got to thinking… what if Apple, in all their infinite wisdom and coolness, created something that encompassed all the things you use the internet for on a daily basis? Packaged as a sleek, streamlined iLife ‘10 application, the possibility is becoming increasingly plausible. Why have five windows open when you can have one? If Apple and Google continue down their current path of animosity, it seems clear that Apple will want have to release something that can counter Google Wave, a one stop shop for seamless email/chatting/social networking. And there are other things that point to this possibility: people are starting to wonder what Apple needs all that computing power for down in North Carolina – in case you haven’t heard, the company recently bought up a 500,000 square foot facility to be used as a data center for an undisclosed reason.

For many young people today, social networking has become an integral part of daily life. Like or not, Twitter is becoming more popular than God The Beatles. I use Gmail, Google Reader, TweetDeck, and Facebook constantly during my “work” day but it would be downright efficient to have all these functions operating in the same application. Imagine sifting through an RSS reader, sharing links immediately with others on Facebook and Twitter at the same time, or maybe taking a photo from Google Reader and inserting it directly into a Flickr account shared by your coworkers. Or how about finding a great new song on Lala and then immediately sharing a streaming link to the song with multiple friends via Gchat? It almost seems like a no-brainer, given the rapidly increasing trend to use multiple online accounts/sites at once.

Maybe this is just the result of the laziness that goes hand and hand with new technological advances, but it seems to me with all these open protocol applications and services, some cross pollination would greatly benefit users. Unfortunately that’s typically not a priority for many profit driven companies. Still, just recently I heard rumblings of Last.fm and Facebook integration into iTunes 9 which leads me to believe that something big is coming, possibly integrated straight into iTunes. I have to say, the idea doesn’t seem too far flung, given Apple’s desire to monopolize all things new and cool.