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Apple Introduces Ping To Make Blogs Like This One Irrelevant

5:06 p.m. · September 1, 2010 · by Julian Hattem

Apple today unveiled their new music-centric social networking program, Ping, which comes with the newest version of iTunes. In the announcement, chief executive Steve Jobs described Ping as “Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes,” in that it encourages social networking based around what music people like.

The free service, available when you upgrade to iTunes 10, lets users see what their friends or favorite artists are listening to, much like programs like Last.fm, but you can also comment on songs or videos and share them with others. And since it's iTunes, you can buy the song right then and there with a single click. Ping also has pretty extensive concert listings and, since there are about 160 million iTunes users, it's already probably on your computer, which makes things easy.

For a while now we've been hearing that Apple has been planning to venture into the realm of social networking, and this could either turn into a great new way to discover music or another annoying sidebar on iTunes.

Has anyone out there upgraded to the new iTunes? Post reviews in the comments. In case you haven't, download iTunes here.