Ping, Apple’s social network for music, will reportedly be gone this fall when the next major upgrade of iTunes is released.
Ping, introduced in September 2010, never caught on with iTunes users. At the recent AllThingsD conference, Tim Cook acknowledged a lukewarm relationship to it, saying “I think the customer voted and said ‘This isn’t something I want to put a lot of energy into.’” And according to AllThingsD, along with sources close to Apple, the company apparently agrees with them.
Ping: Apple’s not-so-successful social network
With Ping gone, so will be Apple’s efforts at social networking. Instead, they have turned to integrating Twitter and Facebook into their software with next month’s release of OS X Mountain Lion. This allows the social networking phenoms to do what they do best, leaving Apple to do what it does best — which is producing great hardware and software.