Testament to the truism that no one gets everything right, Apple is finally 
acknowledging what almost everyone has felt about their social networking effort in iTunes by abandoning Ping. The feature will be missing from the next major update to iTunes. The effort was Apple’s attempt to join in on the social networking craze of 2010, and from its release was an instant failure. The concept was to allow iTunes users to follow their friends and favorite artists, keeping you up to date with announcements and exposing you to new music via previews of tracks your friends were listening to and Top Music selections in the iTunes Music Store. The platform felt more like disguised advertising than a social network, and the few users that did join in didn’t have many peers to share with.
My first though after it popped up post-iTunes update was “how do I uninstall this?” The vast majority of iTunes users apparently felt as I did: there are already plenty of social network providers that are larger and arguably better, so why not leave this to the people who do it for a living? Apple has apparently seen the wisdom of this strategy, and according to AllThingsD will be relying on partnerships with social networking titans Facebook and Twitter to do what Ping couldn’t.
