Social networks are quickly developing iPhone apps due to demand and trends. The iPhone is has been the craze for the past 12 months. The first quarter of fiscal year of 2008 made sales of 2,315,000 iPhones. At this rate, the 4th quarter of 2008 can yield over 4,000,000 iPhones sold. Based on these stats, social networks should provide you with quick and easy access to information and data from your iPhone. The following social networks have made the adjustment recently:

The LinkedIn App

The app features four different sections: the main page, connections, search, and status:

The main page of the iPhone app displays a news feed that shows updates from your LinkedIn contacts - things like whether they’ve updated their profile, changed positions, asked a question, added a new contact, etc.

The “Connections” section displays your LinkedIn contacts in a way that’s very much like the iPhone’s built-in contact list.

From the “Search” section, you can search for contacts by name, keyword, title, or company.

The “Status” section allows you to update your LinkedIn status, which many people use to announce what they’re working on. Others have this hooked up via Ping.fm or a similar app so it’s updated with their latest tweet.

However, one of the app’s best features is its ability to copy LinkedIn contacts over to the contact list on your phone itself. You can download the app from the iPhone store here.

Hi5 Mobile

For all of those that have been waiting patiently for this social network to have a dedicated and optimized version of its service on your mobile device, here it is. And for a bit of boasting on hi5’s end, the social network’s mobile presence spans 26 different languages upon launch, setting out to create a new precedent for a global reach on the mobile front.

So what can you do on hi5’s new mobile network? Send messages, update your status, share photos, and add new friends, to name a few features. As far as media-sharing goes, users are pretty well covered, though I’m interested in seeing how networks will continue to push the boundaries in regards to third-party applications and advertising therein. As hi5 already supports OpenSocial, and has just announced its added support for Widgetbox’s OpenSocial applications, it’s clear that hi5 is ready to offer more options to both its developer community and user base at large.

Wikipedia - Wikipanion

Wikipanion is the best application out for Wikipedia on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This app is simply genius and gives you a simplified version of Wikipedia without leaving out any of the site’s extra features. To simply the site to fit the screen size of the iPhone, the normal links that you’d see to each section of an article are foregone on the main screen. Instead, there’s a small icon located at the bottom of the app that’s similar to the bookmark button in Safari on the iPhone. Using this button, users can access all the sections of an article.

Trulia Updates

Trulia mobile has also been upgraded to include a new iPhone app, which takes advantage of its map and image-viewing capabilities and offers a new way in which to access the news feed features Trulia is also rolling out in this release. In addition to mobile phones, Trulia has also teamed up with Dash Navigation to provide mobile access through its GPS-enabled navigation device, giving you yet another way to both search for and drive to homes in a particular area.

The mobile upgrades, according to Trulia’s VP of Marketing Heather Fernandez, were in direct response to users’ consistent increase in activity and mobile access on the weekends, as they venture out into the real world for a look at homes in the area. To this end, increased mobile support across multiple devices is key to Trulia’s overall growth strategy.

It is evident that all big and small social networks will take advantage of iPhone technology to increase their member base or prevent them from leaving to another social network competitor. By looking at the iPhone demand and the increase of mobile application development, the iPhone and other mobile devices will surely impact social networking in the future.