Name three things you’ve ever used Ping for. Yeah, neither can we. After almost two years of rotting unused like some foul carton of yoghurt in our iTunes fridge, the Wall Street Journal says Apple is admitting its failure. Phew.
The Wall Street Journal, citing “sources close to the company”, says it’ll be a quick and clean death for the pseudo-Twitter “music discovery” service baked into iTunes:
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.
A death of honour befitting a warrior, not a fallow, unbaked social network that bombed the first day it came out. People who made music never used Ping. People who listen to music never used Ping. Did anyone at Apple even use Ping? It’s doubtful, as they should have realised how superfluous it was and pulled the plug a long time ago. Now, whoever was working on Ping can be put to use for something actually worthwhile. [WSJ]