Some details about Apple products are still trickling out after all the hoopla earlier today, and one late-afternoon announcement revealed that Ping, Apple's erstwhile social network, has been marked for a September 30 death. Apple is no longer accepting new members as of today.
"We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said ‘This isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into.'" Tim Cook noted in an interview at the D10 conference this summer.
Ping was introduced in the fall of 2010, and allowed users to "follow" friends and "like" their music choices. It also let users follow artists for tour schedules and album releases. Ping gained Twitter integration a few months after launch, so users could tweet song details from a track he or she was listening to, but Facebook integration never followed. Ping's purpose was to make music discovery easier in the bloated iTunes interface.
Today, of course, Apple announced new additions to iTunes that look very similar to some of the features Ping offered, or intended to offer. iTunes 10.7 will allow users to share music purchases on Facebook, and artist's pages will help users keep up with new tracks and photos that their favorite artists post.
Still, with no one using Apple's social network, Ping didn't aid music discovery (and subsequent purchases of tracks from Apple) for most users, and will be shuttered by the end of this month.
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