Ping is a program created by Apple for iTunes. It is a social network allowing users to follow artists and friends, and to discover what music they're talking about, listening to, and downloading via iPod & iPhone. It was a part of the iTunes 10 upgrade.
Apple closed the service on September 30, 2012, and replaced it in iTunes with Facebook and Twitter integration. Ping failed to gain much traction with users. The social network remained operational until iTunes 10.6.3.
Background[]
Soon after Apple started its music-centric social network Ping last year, Steve Jobs reached out to Lady Gaga and her business manager, Troy Carter, for feedback.
At the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Gaga peppered Mr. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, with questions about Ping’s design and how it would work with other social networks. The pop star and Mr. Carter voiced concerns over the lack of integration with Facebook, but they left respecting Mr. Jobs’s overall vision.
On September 2, 2010, Ping was introduced by Lady Gaga, who made a video discussing it, while in the studio recording Born This Way.
Apple's promotional image for the new feature omits a string of tweets from Gaga's timeline, in which she protests anti-gay marriage legislation Proposition 8.
- This moment of the show is one of my favorites, my vision and fantasy of New York, a glass-slipper subway, and the true fairytale of my life: a catholic school girl on the run to discover herself, and on the way she finds the Monster Ball Tour.
- Growing up in NYC I fell in love with a boy in a watermelon green El Camino "Nadine". We recreated a fantasy version of this car, a car that inspired all the music I wrote on "The Fame". As a moment of symbolism, I decided to turn this car into an instrument: a piano. So when "Nadine" breaks down on the way to the Monster Ball, I open her hood to play "Just Dance" and she starts back up again.
- Underneath my old NYC apt at "176" I arise from the basement to sing about my dream of "The Fame". To tell the story I designed and engineered "Emma" a hybrid electric bass, keytar, and drum machine that echoes "I'm a free bitch".