Wednesday, September 22, 2010

After 18 months of courtship, did Facebook leave Ping at the altar?






Apple and Facebook were in discussions for 18 months before ultimately failing to come to terms on integrating the world?s most popular social network with Apple?s upstart Ping music service.


While we don?t know the details of their discussions, it makes sense that Apple may have wanted to build Ping as a music-tracking and sales service on top of Facebook?s social graph. This could have allowed Apple to get what it wanted out of the relationship ? more iTunes and iPod sales ? without having to build a social network from scratch.


Though they don?t say how, of course, and Facebook Connect is a far sight from a turnkey social music network, isn?t it? Either way, Steve Jobs? previous assertion that Facebook wanted ?onerous? terms doesn?t bode well for near-term reconciliation. Business Insider notes, courtesy of an industry veteran:


Working with Facebook as a large company is challenging at this stage, very similar to mid-late-90s Microsoft.?


Ouch. Bottom line, though, would Ping be more valuable to you if it could find your friends via Facebook connect? How about via Twitter or Gmail? (Or how about we forget Facebook for a minute and just add App Store apps to Ping?)

[Business Insider]


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