Apple will end Ping, a social networking service built into iTunes, this fall, sources have told All Things Digital's John Paczkowski. Ping is likely to be cut off in the next major release of iTunes,
according to AllThingsD, which should arrive in the fall along with iOS 6.
Ping was designed to be a social network for music -- "like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes," as late CEO Steve Jobs described it when introducing Ping at an event in September 2010. Ping was built into the iTunes desktop software and allowed users to follow both artists -- who could post photos, status updates, and concert dates -- as well as friends, in order to see which albums and songs their peers had purchased, rated, or reviewed on iTunes.
Users could also comment on the songs they were listening to, and find others around the world with similar tastes in music.
Despite a considerable amount of hype around launch, however, the service never really got off the ground. It''s not clear why Ping did not catch on -- an early lack of promised Facebook integration and trouble with dummy accounts littering the service with spam comments harmed its chances from the get-go, as did the continued rises of more traditional social networks like Twitter and more disruptive music services like Spotify.
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I was about to say the same thing.
