Apple working on its own social networking app for the iPhone?

With a lot of attention focused on what new hardware consumers can expect to see as the next generation Apple iPhone inches closer to reality, there is a new document that details a new app for the smartphone which might be coming in the horizon. Documents published to the USPTO shed some light on Apple's potential workings on a social networking application for the iPhone. Known more conveniently as iGroups in the patent filing, it essentially aims to allow people to get together and transfer information privately with their group of contacts – it looks to utilize “virtual GPS” if there is no present true positioning technology in place which could mean something along the lines of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to approximate a user's location. Friends can easily be in the loop of things as the app will work in conjunction with MobileMe to transfer information between specific people in a group. Even if this become a reality, Apple will need to figure out a way to resolve a naming dispute with the existing iPhone app called iGroups – we'd figure there would be decent sum of monetary compensation to the developer.

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source: Patently Apple via Mashable