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Almost everything Apple puts out usually flies off the shelves, but Ping hasn’t really caught onto the reputation most of Apple’s (News - Alert) other products have. Launched only a few months back in Sept, Ping’s success has been minimal in its initial months.

Ping is a social network for music, created by Apple which links to a user’s iTunes account giving members the ability to “follow” their favorite artists or friends to view what music they are downloading, talking about and listening to.

According to a Yahoo News article, as a last attempt to drive up some interest in Ping, Apple has merged its social media-music tool with Twitter. Users with accounts on both sites can now sync them so their activities on Ping will be posted to Twitter. Music reviews along with links to buy the music in iTunes will soon be showing up in tweets.

Ping was first said to be joining with Facebook (News - Alert) so that Ping users could access their friend’s music history using the more popular social networking platform. Apparently, Facebook denied Ping access to application programming interfaces that would allow it to search for an iTunes user’s friends on Facebook. Normally the API access is open and does not require permission; however, Facebook somehow put a lock on the access.

Steve Jobs was reportedly in conversation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (News - Alert) less than a month ago, and there was speculation the two were mulling over Facebook-Ping integration, a deal that is no longer on the table, according to the Yahoo article.

This isn’t the first time social media giant Facebook bullied one of the other social media players. Prior to the Ping incident, Facebook also allowed Twitter users to find their friends on Facebook, however, soon after, the social networking site locked its API.

So not only will you begin to notice a stream of advertisements in your Twitter newsfeed, but now get ready to see Ping related updates when users who are members of both social networks either sign up for Ping or share their activity.  

Could this be the answer to both Ping and Twitters low-traffic problems? It’s obvious that Ping needs Twitter’s influence a bit more, but Twitter could use the publicity as well. Maybe the two companies are just joining forces as a ploy to get back at Facebook for blocking their access to its API.  Stayed tuned to TMCnet for the latest on the two social media platforms joining forces.

Stefanie Mosca is a Web editor for TMCnet. Previously she worked as a freelance copy editor for Digital Surgeons LLC. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University and a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of New Haven. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Stefanie Mosca