Apple has pulled its Ping network which was supposed to kill Facebook as all loyal Apple fanboys got together to talk about how marvellous Coldplay was, and when they were going to buy the next iPad. Though Ping gained one million users in its first two days of availability, the service never really caught on.
The problem was that Apple fanboys make for a rubbish social network. While the fact they all have gross stupidity in common, the qualities that makes them Apple fanboys makes them supremely obnoxious to other humans, whether they are fanboys or not.
The writing on the wall came at the D10 conference last month when Apple CEO Tim Cook said "the customer voted and said 'this isn't something that I want to put a lot of energy into'."
Ping appeared more than a year and a half ago and few signed up. Now it seems that Apple is discontinuing Ping, rather than letting it be a further embarrassment. It already has relationships with Twitter and Facebook anyway.
Sources close to the company say that Ping, which still exists today in iTunes 10.6.3, will be gone with the software’s next major release.