After making hints about its future back in May, Apple has announced plans to shut down Ping as of September 30th via a notice in its iTunes 10.7 update, reports Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac.
When asked at the All Things D conference if he would kill off the music-based social network, Cook said “some customers love it, but there’s not a huge number that do, so will we kill it? I don’t know. I’ll look at it.”
“We tried Ping and the customer voted,” Cook continued, “and we said, this isn’t something I want to put a lot of energy into.”
“Apple doesn’t have to own a social network, if that’s the heart of your question. But does Apple need to be social? Yes. But the ways that we express that today are integrating Twitter into iOS, and you’ll see us integrate Twitter into Mac OS with Mountain Lion. Some people think of iMessage as social.”
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The expanded look at iTunes 11 today showed much more integration with Facebook and Twitter as well as enhancements to discoverability and browsing for both music and apps.
Image Credit: Toby Oxborrow
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