Apple seems to have finally decided to discontinue Ping, the music-centric social networking service that never really took off. The service was introduced in September 2010 to entice users to share their favourite music with others, receive updates from artists and friends, share samples of songs they liked, and find information about the latest concerts. The service, which was Apple's big push into the social grid, was not well received by iTunes and iPhone users and failed to generate a new social network as had been the objective of the venture.
Many reasons have been given for the Ping's failure. First, the desire to build a brand-new "island" without any connection with the existing popular networks. There was no Facebook integration, widening the gulf between mainstream social networking and an Apple entertainment specific hub. Also, the scope of Ping was extremely limited because people like to share links to videos and web pages, neither of which need involve iTunes.
Even the artists who started off posting regular seem to have given up on Ping, further disconnecting the users who remain. Sure, the likes of Katy Perry and Coldplay have stuck around, but they remain an exception in a sea of artists that were active when it launched.
This announcement was first reported by
AllThingsD, which stated that many verifiable sources revealed that Apple will drop Ping from the next major iTunes update to coincide with the release of iOS 6 (expected to be around September this year).
The closure of Ping doesn't mean that Apple has shied away from social integration. Quite the opposite. At the recent WWDC keynote, Apple confirmed that it had chosen to partner with more established players in the social space by integrating Facebook in iOS 6 and Mac OS X 10.8 while simultaneously expanding the scope of Twitter integration.
With Facebook and Twitter now an integral part of iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion for the Mac, it appears that the direction Apple has chosen for social is to finally cut their losses with Ping in favour of establishing meaningful partnerships. While Apple's own experiments with social networking may have ceased, the overall Apple experience promises to get a lot more social.