iTunes Ping

Apple built a social network inside iTunes, launched it without Facebook and without the songs, and closed it after two years of silence

Shut down
19902026

Ping was a music-focused social network that Apple built into iTunes 10 and launched on 1 September 2010. Users could follow artists and friends and see what they were buying, listening to and reviewing in the iTunes Store. A planned Facebook integration was dropped at the last minute, spam arrived immediately, and the network never caught on. Apple closed it on 30 September 2012 after 25 months.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2010
  2. 1 September 2010 Launch
    Ping launches inside iTunes 10

    A million users in 48 hours, Apple says.

  3. 3 September 2010 Incident
    Spam accounts flood the feeds
  4. 12 November 2010 Feature
    Twitter integration added
  5. 2012
  6. 29 May 2012 Decline
    Tim Cook says customers did not want Ping

    At the D10 conference.

  7. 12 September 2012 Shutdown announced
    Apple confirms the closure

    iTunes 11 gets Facebook and Twitter sharing instead.

  8. 30 September 2012 Shutdown
    Ping is switched off

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: apple.com/itunes/ping, 30 May 2011 →

Browse apple.com/itunes/ping as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2010 2011 2012 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Apple 2010–2012 Founded Built into iTunes 10

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Registered accounts 1 million 3 September 2010 Reported Apple figure for the first 48 hours

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Tim Cook said at the D10 conference in May 2012 that Ping was something customers did not want to put energy into, and in September 2012 Apple confirmed it would close on 30 September 2012, with Facebook and Twitter sharing built into iTunes 11 instead.

Our analysis: Ping was a social network built around buying music, which is not what people do socially with music. You could follow artists and see what friends had purchased on iTunes, but you could not play a song from a post, only preview it and buy it, and the friends were hard to find because a Facebook connection was pulled days before launch after a disagreement between the companies. Spam accounts filled the gaps within the first week. The product lived inside a desktop application that people opened to sync a phone, so it never had a moment of its own. Apple replaced it with share buttons, which is what it should have been.

History [edit]

A social network in the Store

Steve Jobs announced Ping on 1 September 2010 as part of iTunes 10, calling it a social network for music. It lived in the iTunes sidebar: you created a profile, followed artists such as Lady Gaga and U2, followed friends, and saw a feed of what they had bought, rated and said about songs. Artists could post photos and concert dates. Apple said a million people had joined in the first 48 hours.

What Ping did not have was Facebook. Jobs had shown Facebook Connect on stage, but the integration vanished before the software shipped; he told a reporter that Facebook had asked for onerous terms. Finding friends therefore meant searching by email, and most profiles stayed empty. Within a week the feeds were full of fake Justin Bieber accounts offering free iPhones.

Quiet for two years

Apple added Twitter integration in November 2010 and a few artist features, then mostly stopped. The posts you could make were tied to the Store: you could not play a song from the feed, only a 30-second preview with a buy button. Most iTunes users never clicked the sidebar entry. By 2011 it was the example journalists reached for when a large company tried a social product.

In May 2012 Tim Cook, asked about it at the D10 conference, said customers had voted and that Apple would not keep putting energy into it. iTunes 11, previewed that September, replaced Ping with ordinary Facebook and Twitter sharing. Apple confirmed the closure on 12 September 2012, and Ping stopped on 30 September 2012. Apple would not try a music social feature again until Apple Music Connect in 2015, which also closed.

The domain today

apple.com/itunes/ping no longer exists. Apple Music carries friend listening and shared playlists, none of it called Ping.

Similar projects

MySpace A place for friends 2003–now Google+ The social network everyone was signed up to and nobody used 2011–2019 Friendster The social network that came first 2002–2015 Bebo The $850 million write-off 2005–2013 Yik Yak Anonymous, local, and impossible to moderate 2013–2017 Orkut Brazil's living room, built in a 20% project 2004–2014

Sources [edit]

  1. Apple unveils iTunes 10 with Ping Apple Newsroom 1 September 2010
  2. Apple's Ping will be killed off September 30 AllThingsD 12 September 2012
  3. iTunes Ping Wikipedia 1 January 2024 [archived]
  4. Tim Cook on Ping at D10 AllThingsD 29 May 2012
  5. Ping is already full of spam TechCrunch 3 September 2010

Last verified: 22 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).