Apple ventures into Social Networking with ‘Ping’

Apple have entered the race for global social networking supremacy following the launch of Ping, a new application to be integrated into the latest iTunes update.

The service, which will be able to be accessed on Macs and PCs as well as other Apple software, and will allow users to build a network of friends based around shared musical tastes.

Apple’s co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs revealed the innovation at a press conference in San Francisco, claiming that Ping was “Facebook meets Twitter meets iTunes”, a clear statement of intent to rival the two present leviathans of social networking.

Ping will give users the opportunity to build playlists based on what their friends are listening to, as well as giving them a forum to debate and discuss music with fellow “Pingers”.

Jobs said “with Ping you can follow your favourite artists and friends and join a worldwide conversation with music’s most passionate fans”.

The application does indeed take inspiration from Facebook’s strength of promoting activities and interests as a basis for building networks, while also drawing from Twitter’s ability for users to broadcast opinions quickly and easily.

Jobs also boasted of Ping’s superior privacy settings, in an attempt to reassure potential users following continuing concerns over Facebook’s policy on this issue..

“Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super-easy to set up.”

Whether Ping is a success will remain to be seen, but it is clear that Apple’s hunger for technological domination is clearly showing no signs of letting up any time soon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 12:53 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.