Apple have introduced a social element to the latest version of iTunes called Ping, now the idea sounds fine see what your friends are downloading or listening to all in one place but that has upset a few people at Facebook.
After introducing Ping on Wednesday 1st September 2010. Apple’s CEO Steven P. Jobs was asked why Apple built its own social network? Apple admitted to reporters that and they held discussions with Facebook, but that the social networking company’s terms were “onerous.”
Yet Apple started using Facebook’s API to allow users to find their Facebook friends on Ping. But that stopped working on Thursday. Remember the 6 hour outage I reported in the previous post? Ironically that was on Thursday too. Facebook blocked Apple because Ping had the potential to send so much traffic to Facebook which could cause site instability.
According to the NYT: Facebook said: “We’re working with Apple to resolve this issue. We’ve worked together successfully in the past, and we look forward to doing so in the future.” Facebook did not specify what the “issue” was. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
We can only guess why Facebook have stopped allowing Apple Ping access to their site. I personally hope they realize their common ground one is great a creating computers and phones the other is great at social. Working together would end up with a win-win situation.
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