Maybe You Didn’t Know It Existed In The First Place But Apple Is Killing Its “Ping” Social Network

Nice to meet and you and goodbye.

Joining the social network graveyard as of yesterday, Apple announced it would be shuttering its Ping venture. What? You’d never heard of  an iTunes music social network called Ping? Welcome to the club, and now it’s too late to join if you were fancying the idea of signing up for yet another  site on which to share every detail of your life.

Ping told users this weekend that it wasn’t going to accept any more people and would be done forever on Sunday, which isn’t very shocking to anyone in the know. Instead, Apple is going to update iTunes in October and work it out so that it’s integrated with Facebook and Twitter, reports the Los Angeles Times. That way you can just like and retweet what you’re listening to on the networks everyone is already involved with.

Ping was around for two years, and please forgive me if I’m just out of the loop (and I mean that sincerely), but I didn’t have a clue that it was even a thing. Apologies to anyone who used and loved the service, but as the LAT says of those two years, both “were filled with absolute irrelevance.” Ouch — you totally got zinged, Ping.

The network was born in September 2010 and was meant to enable users to discover new music, but it never really took off, so to speak, because it wasn’t linked up with Facebook. And even if you hate/aren’t on Facebook, you know it exists. Apparently Steve Jobs wanted it to be Facebook-friendly, but that never happened because he said the company was asking for “onerous terms that we could not agree to.”

Farewell, Ping. We hardly knew ye.

Ping, Apple’s misfired social network, bids farewell [Los Angeles Times]

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