Apple shuts down Ping, after making hints about its future back in May, Apple has announced plans to shut down Ping as of September 30th.

Ping was originally announced in fall 2010 as a social network in which users followed and liked the tunes each other listened to. To wit, Steve Jobs called it "sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes."

But it failed in a number of realms, most reportedly the realm of people actually using it. It was a bit clunky, offered commercials nonstop and didn't have a friend-finding feature after a deal with Facebook fell through.

Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks he knows what happened: "We tried Ping and I think the customer voted and said, 'This isn't something that I want to put a lot of energy into.'"

This would be sad news, but you probably weren't aware it existed in the first place.