Death of Ping

If you’re like most people, when you open iTunes you completely ignore the little open/close triangle in the bottom right corner of the window. In fact, you probably closed it so long ago that you forgot it was there. That triangle is where Ping lives, at least for another few months. Apple is kicking its “social network for music” to the curb when it refreshes its operating systems this fall. All Things D says: “At this point, years into the social networking phenomenon, why not leave the social stuff to the social people who are good at it? Apple might be great at software and hardware, but its skills in creating a social network are sorely lacking.”

Ping was released in an update to iTunes over a year and a half ago and has pretty much sat in a corner ever since. And now that Apple has announced a partnership with Facebook (just like it already has with Twitter), expect to be able to share more socially on those networks.