Ahead of last week’s Apple Keynote, I was quite excited to see iTunes 10 receive a major overhaul, but unfortunately in the end it just ended up gaining a tad more bloat in the form of a brand new social network that, surprise surprise, centres around iTunes. It does have a few nice tweaks though, which help make up for the lack of a diet, so let’s take a look.

Minor Tweaks

Apple have made a few minor changes in the small jump from the release of iTunes 10 last week, saying how it was described as Twitter for music lovers. Essentially, that isn’t far from the truth. With your iTunes account, you can set up your profile and choose whether to let people follow you on the service (feel free to follow me on Ping, it would be quite amusing if I got a higher follower count than on Twitter) as well as follow others, including various artists who have chosen to create a profile as well.

Your followers will be able to see what albums you have bought, what music you choose to like, and you can make posts about music as well. All in all, it’s a recipe for success, but there is one problem – it doesn’t have Facebook integration, despite Steve Jobs clearly saying that it would at the keynote. What happened? That’s between Apple and Facebook, but they clearly disagreed on something. Let’s hope they sort out their problems so we can actually start following our friends, shall we? Because without Facebook integration, Ping is as good as dead to most users, at least in my opinion.

Ping: Apple’s Social Music Network

The biggest change that everyone will notice is the addition of ‘Ping’ on your iTunes sidebar. I touched on Ping a little when we told you all about the release of iTunes 10 last week, saying how it was described as Twitter for music lovers. Essentially, that isn’t far from the truth. With your iTunes account, you can set up your profile and choose whether to let people follow you on the service (feel free to follow me on Ping, it would be quite amusing if I got a higher follower count than on Twitter) as well as follow others, including various artists who have chosen to create a profile as well.

Your followers will be able to see what albums you have bought, what music you choose to like, and you can make posts about music as well. All in all, it’s a recipe for success, but there is one problem – it doesn’t have Facebook integration, despite Steve Jobs clearly saying that it would at the keynote. What happened? That’s between Apple and Facebook, but they clearly disagreed on something. Let’s hope they sort out their problems so we can actually start following our friends, shall we? Because without Facebook integration, Ping is as good as dead to most users, at least in my opinion.