A newly revealed patent suggests that Apple is working on social networking for the iPhone platform that will integrate with the operating system and make sharing your information with other iPhone OS users as simple as being in the same location. Gizmodo is quick to point out that the number of patents we see actually make it to production are very small, but the potential here is still very impressive.

The patent suggests that iPhone users will share bluetooth tokens to connect to nearby iPhones which will allow you to share photos, text, contact information — potentially limitless options. Even if you’re out of range of the initiating group member, you can daisy chain the information to a relatively infinite distance as long as you’re close enough to someone in the group. Apple uses a rock concert illustration in which the band initiates a group and can connect to the farthest listener as long as there are group members in between them.

We seem to have a recurring theme here with many of Apple’s inventions… education. The iPad could redefine how we do text books, and this iGroups patent could redefine how lectures are shared in the classroom. Think about it: with iGroups, a teacher could potentially simulcast his presentation, notes, even the week’s assignments to every student in the room. That would be pretty impressive.

We tend to think practically, but the social networking potential is still huge. There are many apps out there that connect people in certain locations — think Foursquare or Yelp — but those applications lack one crucial argument: not everyone has them. The user base is strictly limited to people who have installed the application and opened it at their current location. If Apple built a feature like this into an OS, we’d see the death of Foursquare and the beginning of a social networking monopoly, at least for iPhone OS devices. If Apple did with iGroups as they did with iTunes (platform independence) they could take over the world… no?

Not everyone wants to open an app every time they go to the bar, not everyone even wants to toy with an iPhone all night, but we could very easily see this become a trendy thing to do and destroy all chance of normalcy in social interactions. Want to talk to a girl tonight? Don’t man-up and walk over to her, casually say “hello” via a bluetooth message.

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