A key feature being plugged by the major phone manufacturers lately is how well a device interacts with social networking services, all bringing something completely new to the table.

Android phones and the iPhone are often pitted against each other in this arena, but which is best for your average social butterfly?

iPhone

The iPhone has a great variety of social media applications on its App Store and carries networking client heavyweights such as Tweetie 2 and Facebook for iPhone – both of which are far beyond anything found on any of the other platforms in terms of functionality and general polish.

Tweetie 2 is a near-unbeatable client for Twitter, with better integration with your account than anything you can find on your desktop computer even. For an iPhone app, it’s even good at sharing data with other applications – so you can send links, tweets or images to selected services pretty well. This is probably the application I miss most since moving over to Android.

Facebook for iPhone also comes out on top compared to its Android sibling. You can manage groups, upload video and keep on top of your social calendar with ease.

But iPhone has its shortcomings. Even though the likes of Tweetie 2 have the ability to communicate with selected applications, they cannot plug into the overall mobile experience like Android counterparts can.

Another key stumbling block is that the iPhone can only run one application at a time – making it pretty hard to keep track of multiple networks at a time.

Android

In short, the Twitter and Facebook applications for Android tend to lack the overall polish that their iPhone counterparts have.

For example, Twidroid, the Android application to beat, still pales in comparison to Tweetie 2 -both in features and user interface. The Facebook ‘app’ is a mere portal to the network’s mobile website.

But where Android’s social networking capabilities shine is constant connectivity.

Say you want to keep on top of your IMs while you browse Facebook or Twitter – Android’s multiple app support coupled with its excellent notification system make this a pleasant experience.

Also, you may notice that the actual phone manufacturers customise the phones themselves to allow you to access Facebook from your contacts list, for example. There have been some great attempts at this – some really show the platform’s social potential. Check out HTC and Moto’s shots at this.

Conclusion

For the moment I would recommend the iPhone for the casual social networker – with solid Twitter and Facebook applications it is hard to beat.

But for a regular communicator connected to multiple networks at once, I strongly recommend picking up a HTC Hero or Moto Cliq/Dext. Both have solid manufacturer-made networking capabilities built into the phone’s core and take full advantage of Android’s flexibility. The future certainly looks bright for Android – let’s just hope developers invest enough time into it!

Disclaimer – Motorola is a client of the company I work for.

Thanks to nrkbeta for the title image.

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