iTunes 9 to offer social networking on steroids – report

Tired of accusations of being over-secretive and smarting at the reaction to some decisions made by its App Store approval team, Apple’s getting social and plans to weave many more social networking features into iTunes 9, a report this morning claims.

Last week’s hot tip claimed the company intends adding Blu-ray, Last.fm and iLike support within iTunes 9. Today, the Boy Genius Report informs us that Apple is developing its very own social networking application to integrate your iLife with your social networks.

“We’ve been informed that Apple has plans to tie iTunes 9 into a “Social” application that they plan to release in the future. It was said that the application (separate from iTunes) will be similar to Yahoo’s OneConnect offering and consolidate all your social networking services,” the report states.

Among other features, you’ll be able to share the music you’re listening to right now, connect with friends of your friends and update your status message on multiple networks at the same time. Oh, and you’ll be able to broadcast music statuses, also.

Another much-wanted new feature, iTunes 9 will offer users the chance to sort out the appearance of applications on an iPhone screen in numerous ways, including custom arrangements and by date of addition.

These new social features feel all the more interesting in view of other recent reports which told us Apple may have plans for the introduction of its own iTunes music streaming service – could these social networking plans tied to an a la carte download service and a streaming service mean you’ll be able to listen to tracks your friends are playing in real-time using the internet, streaming them to sample them, and then purchasing the download? Perhaps ads-funded?

Is it not also possible WiFi-enabled iPods, including the iPod touch and iPhone, will also be harness these features, perhaps even offering the capacity to share songs with other users of these products over the same wireless network?

We’ll see, but this could make entering the US market a tough proposition for music label-owned streaming music service, Spotify…