iOS 5 contacts app has fields for Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and Myspace info

One of the more interesting iOS 5 features revealed this week during the Monday keynote was seamless integration with Twitter. Now a report published by All Things D shows that fields for other social networking sites also appear in the iOS 5 contacts app, including Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Myspace.

While the operating system's integration with Twitter is fairly widespread -- single sign-on for multiple apps, ability to send photos directly from the Camera, YouTube, Safari, and Maps apps, and auto-fill from Contacts -- it appears that at this time the other social sites aren't as tightly bound to iOS 5. Users can begin by populating handles for each of the sites on an address book page for a contact, although developers speaking to All Things D reported that even that capability was a bit buggy at this time.

As blogger Liz Gannes notes, "The inclusion of the feature shows Apple's acknowledgement of the importance of Web presences and contact information." At this point, manually entering friends' handles could be onerous for those who have hundreds or thousands of "friends" on each social networking site. Apple could offer Twitter-like authentication for the other services, which would make matching contacts and social network handles somewhat more automatic.

With at least three or four months remaining before iOS 5 becomes available to users, we're sure to hear much more about social network integration in the new mobile OS.