PING

> ACCESSING ARCHIVAL DATA...

Here lies Ping, Apple’s 2010 bid to make iTunes social. Follow your favorite artists, see what your friends were buying, post a review of an album — all from inside the most joyless piece of software ever to sync a phone.

Steve Jobs called it “Facebook meets Twitter meets iTunes.” Facebook called it a rights violation and blocked Ping from connecting to its social graph on day one. With no friend network to inherit, Ping launched into a room with nobody in it, and the room was iTunes 10, which nobody wanted to be in either.

Two years of spam-filled artist pages and tumbleweed activity feeds later, Apple pulled Ping quietly, folding whatever was left into Twitter and Facebook integrations that actually worked. No farewell post. No blog. Just one fewer tab in a sidebar nobody clicked.

EOF