Phone makers are starting to understand that people want more social features on their phone to help keep them connected with friends. You can easily send messages and update your status right now, but it is difficult to get timely information of where your friends are. Google has just launched Google Latitude, allowing you to see your friend’s geographic position on a map in real-time. Nokia does not want to be left out here. Nokia recently acquired bit-side, a mobile location centric social networking firm. Nokia Vice President and head of Social Location said, “Acquiring bit-side enables Nokia to offer consumers the world-leading mobile location applications, such as Maps, along with routing and navigation at an accelerated speed.”

Nokia is expected to really soon be releasing an update to its own mapping service, also letting you find and track your friends, as does Google Latitude now. With the Nokia app, you will also be able to upload geotagged photos, and update your status, similar to Twitter. The app will also tell you if your friends are nearby which can prove very useful at various events.

I just hope Nokia will somehow open the app so it can be used on different phones such as Blackberry in order to encourage mass adoption even though Nokia remains the number one phone maker.

It will be interesting to see what other companies, including social networks like Facebook, do about the new friend tracking services. Will Facebook release a similar service for its mobile app? What are your thoughts?