Why iGroups is coming to an iPhone near you

* It's a great way to discover new media to purchase. By allowing limited sharing in location-based social groups, friends will swap movies, TV shows and music, which will lead to easy purchase right from the phone.

* While mobile social networking feels like the exotic, bleeding edge of technology today, it will become a standard cell-phone feature tomorrow. Mobile social networking will be just how contact applications work. All serious contact applications on phones will gain location awareness. Apple's is no exception.

* Whoever wins mobile social networking wins the contest for where contacts are stored. Google, FaceBook, Linked-In, Microsoft, Plaxo and others want you to keep all your contacts on their sites and services. In the future, whoever facilitates the best mobile social networking experience will be where people park their address books. Apple wants your contacts to live on its servers. And that's why Apple has a strong incentive to get this out fast.

The iGroups patent points toward a new world of mobile social networking from Apple iPhones. Best of all, it appears likely that this technology will hit as soon as Apple can possibly implement it.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.