Apple Will Drop Ping from iTunes

Apple is planning to abandon Ping, its social network for music, AllThingsD reports. Ping is bundled with the most recent generation of the iTunes program, but it is expected to be gone by the next major release of the program sometime this fall. According to AllThingsD’s sources, Apple is planning to use its partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to pursue further social applications connected with iTunes.

“We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said, ‘This isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into,'” Apple CEO Tim Cook told AllThingsD at D10. In an interview at the conference, Cook suggested that while Apple needs to be social, the company doesn’t need to own a social network. “Things like this make our devices even more useful to people,” he said.