Is Mozilla trying to turn Firefox into a social media browser? Not exactly, but the developers understand that if more social platform features were built into their browser, it would make their flagship product much more desirable to a generation that uses social media platforms the way older generations used food for sustenance.

To facilitate the process of making Firefox even more social media-friendly than it already is, Mozilla’s development team is working on the Social API, which, according to their description, “enumerates the touch points between a social provider and the browser,” which is fancy talk for making Firefox play well with various social media platforms. Mozilla goes on to list the capabilities of Social API, which is still in the developmental/testing phase:

• configure which social service provider(s) you want to integrate with your browser
• easily switch which service provider(s) should be active at any time
• see which of your contacts are online and available for a chat (and start or join chats)
• share and read updates
• recommend, or express support, for things that you discover on the Web
• manage and receive notifications about activities coming from the service (friend requests, chat requests, etc.)

Considering the stage of development of Social API, there’s still a lot of features being considered, including notification schemes, social feeds, status updates of friends, and the correct implementation of the chat function. If you’re curious about how close Mozilla is to completing the Social API, perhaps the following quote will give you an idea of where Mozilla stands:

We are not sure how these features should be visually exposed, but we have some ideas, which we will share in subsequent posts.

With that in mind, it’s pretty clear that Social API is in its infancy. Considering the goals of Social API, would a browser that features such attribute appeal to social media addicts, or does the proliferation of smartphone Internet connections render these developments almost null and void?

Let us know what you think.