Ping Will Be Sent To The Grave When The New iTunes Ships Later This Year [Report]

Steve Jobs announced Ping as a music "discovery" tool in September of 2010.

Poor Ping. Apple’s failed iTunes social network experiment just hasn’t caught on. Ping didn’t get off to a good start when Apple was unable to partner with Facebook years ago, and the service has become a running joke amongst the Apple fan community.

According to a new report, Ping will be killed once and for all later this year when Apple debuts the next major version of iTunes.

The reliable AllThingsD reports:

Sources close to the company say that Ping, which still exists today in iTunes 10.6.3, will be gone with the software’s next major release, likely scheduled for this fall. And at that point Apple’s social networking offerings will shift to Twitter and new partner Facebook entirely.

Apple will instead use its new Twitter and Facebook integration in OS X Mountain Lion to give users social networking features they care about.

Tim Cook addressed Ping in his interview at D10 recently. After trying to defend the unused social network, Cook admitted that “We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted.” He then said, “This isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into.” That’s about all the confirmation we need.

It was nice knowing ya, Ping.

• Source AllThingsD

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