The social networking service noticed that your contact accepted your invitation. Now the meeting -- its data, time, location -- is added to the "history" section of his contacts, and you'll be reminded of this meeting the next time his name comes up.
This unscheduled meeting caps off an enormously productive day, because that same social networking service informed you in the morning which of your previous contacts and colleagues were attending the same conference, so you didn't miss anyone.
Business people usually swap paper business cards when they meet. These exchanges take place during millions of interactions around the world every day. But all that contact information is already available online and in greater detail than a business card can carry. Already, LinkedIn provides an "invite" feature on its mobile browser service, where you simply add someone's name and e-mail address, and LinkedIn will invite that person to join your network of contacts.
What's missing is context. Future phones and future apps will add this auto-capture feature for both contact info and location.
Meeting people and capturing their contact information will become a two- or three-button pushing process. And getting contact history will be nearly automatic, a function of your calendar application, which will see who you're meeting with and pop up that information at a user-designated amount of time before the meeting.
With regular social networking, you make "friends" with people either by connecting online with people you already know, or you meet them online. With business mobile social networking, you'll be able to capture better information about the business people you're meeting. Snap a picture of the person's face, and enter in his name. Or you can electronically swap contact information, including a photo, to go into the contact databases. The phone will know where you are, check your calendar and link the meeting with the person. It will also capture the location. In the future, you can be reminded not only what the person looks like, but the context of your meeting. This will be far superior to exchanging paper business cards.
Of course, you'll be able to custom-configure settings for each contact to protect yourself against stalkers and aggressive salespeople.
The scenarios above are just those we can imagine now. As is the case with many new technologies, the real usage models are nearly impossible to predict.
Regardless, mobile social networking is coming soon -- big time -- and for business.
Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at [email protected] or his blog, The Raw Feed.
