Author: JD

WHEN I SPOKE IN LONDON I WAS TELLING THE AUDIENCE THAT CREATING A SOCIAL NETWORK, AS A AFTER FACT, CLEARY WONT WORK AND I MENTIONED PING Remember Ping? Apple announced the service as part of their iTunes offering on September 1, 2010. So almost 2 years ago. However, there doesn’t seem to be any amount of time on God’s green earth that will enable the service to hit critical mass. In fact, word emerged today, by way of the Wall Street Journal, that Apple will send the Ping service to the grave with the official launch of iOS 6, which will also see a new iTunes as we do every iOS iteration. Sources close to the company say that Ping, which still exists today in iTunes 10.6.3 and the iOS 6 beta — where it doesn’t work, 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. Ever since Ping launched the service has floundered like a fish out of water. Which might be partially due to the lack of Facebook integration. That said, Facebook Connect was available during the initial launch, though without authorization from the Zuckerberg and co. Subsequently talks transpired but Facebook and Apple couldn’t come to an agreement, resulting in the removal of Facebook from the Ping service. It also didn’t help that SPAM was a major factor in the beginning, though it’s not clear if that lead to the services decline in the long term.