Apple And Facebook Talked For More Than A Year — Then Apple Launched Ping Without Facebook's Help
Then Apple Launched Ping Without Facebook's Help — Three weeks after Apple launched Ping, its new social networking service, Apple still hasn't been able to work out a deal with Facebook to integrate its vast social network into Ping.
Context & Ripple Effects
Ping arrived at the start of September 2010 bundled into iTunes 10, and GigaOM immediately framed it as a bet that music buying would become social commerce — recommendations and friend activity driving sales inside the store. For that bet to pay off, Ping needed a live social graph on day one.
Instead, the confirmed record shows Apple and Facebook talked for more than a year and still walked away with nothing: three weeks after launch there is no deal integrating Facebook's network into Ping. Tech Check's report that Apple had pulled back the curtain for one company underscores how selectively access was being granted around this launch — and Facebook was not among the let-in.
First-order effects
- Ping users start from an empty network: with no Facebook Connect integration, they cannot import existing friendships, so Apple must seed all social activity from iTunes account holders alone.
- Apple carries the full cost of bootstrapping a social layer solo — moderation, profiles, and discovery — while Facebook loses nothing by withholding its graph.
Second-order effects
- Facebook's refusal confirms its social graph as gated infrastructure: any media or device platform wanting built-in social now has to negotiate on Facebook's terms or go without.
- Rivals courting Facebook partnerships gain leverage by contrast — a willingness to integrate becomes a differentiator against Apple's closed approach.
Third-order effects
- If large platforms keep failing to license the dominant social graph, each builds a parallel identity and friendship layer, fragmenting sign-in and social data across competing walled gardens.
- The episode hardens a structural question for the industry: whether the social graph is a rented utility or a strategic asset each platform must own outright.
The trend: Major platform owners are splitting between renting Facebook's social graph and rebuilding their own in-house — and Apple's year of fruitless talks marks the point where it chose to build.