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Apple Working on 'Photo Streaming' and Other Social Features in iOS? [Update]

Wednesday January 19, 2011 5:02 pm PST by Arnold Kim

With the release of Beta 2 of iOS 4.3, it seems there is more evidence that Apple is working on integrating more social features to iOS. The first beta revealed evidence of a "Find My Friends" features for MobileMe that might provide users with real-time location data of their friends. In Beta 2, 9to5Mac points to findings of references to two new services called "Media Stream" and "Photo Streaming".

With Photo Streams, you will also be allowed to invite" other users to view your pictures as you take them and upload them to a service. This service looks like it is connected to MobileMe, and we speculate that Media Stream can be directly connected to Find my Friends. We think Find my Friends will be another aspect of Apples social network, a part of a free MobileMe, where you can choose to view your friends Photo Streams all on that same map.

The site speculates that this service could tie in with Apple's massive NC data center. There only appears to be scant evidence of the new features in the latest betas, so it's hard to know how close they are to completion. This along with "Find My Friends" references could point to a significant new social initiative for Apple.

In a previous email, Steve Jobs claimed that MobileMe would get "a lot better" in 2011.

Update: We've received additional information about what "PhotoStream" is. According to text found in the iOS 4.3 beta:

Photo Stream uploads and stores the last thirty days of your photos on MobileMe and downloads them to all of your devices.

Photo Streams can also be shared to other individuals.

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