like everybody else in mobile, we were pretty interested in the details behind google’s android platform released earlier this week.
we haven’t decided whether or not to build a mobile social networking app for android to extend/complement our mobile site, but it was interesting that social networking was listed as the first suggested focus area for the android developer challenge.
as mobile social networking app developers, the holy grail for us (dating back to our research while at the MIT Media Lab) has always been getting access to a user’s contacts on their cell phone. if you think about it, a user’s cell phone contact list is their most personal and most important social network: i might have hundreds or thousands of email contacts and/or friends on myspace, facebook, etc., but only my most important contacts are listed in my cell phone’s address book.
it looks like android is finally going to give mobile social developers access to a user’s cell phone contacts. since mobile social apps need to be available on a wide number of carriers/handsets in order to really take off, let’s hope other mobile platforms being to open up as well…
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