How do you get two of Silicon Valley’s icons together for dinner? Well, first you get one to invite the other over for dinner, and second, have a service you want on the other guy’s network. Where am I going with this, you might ask? Well, Steve Jobs invited Mark Zuckerberg over to dinner at his house. The next question that you might be pondering is why? If you recall, Apple and Facebook not coming to a deal over Ping’s integration with Facebook, and that is the most likely reason why the two were having dinner.
If you have been living under a rock for the past couple of months, or just don’t keep up with the tech scene, you might not have heard about Apple’s Ping and Facebook integration talks. Apple and Facebook had been in talks for about eighteen months to integrate Apple’s Ping service with Facebook’s network. However, the two could not come to an agreement on the privacy terms. Steve Job’s was quoted as saying that Facebook’s terms were too “onerous.” Then, when Apple tried to have their customers link their Ping accounts to their Facebook accounts; Facebook blocked them from doing that right off the bat.
It would have been great if they could have come to terms on the agreement. This way, Apple would not have to build their own music social network from the ground up, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Facebook has a large user base that Apple could integrate with, which would make it easy for Apple and their customers. This way, Apple’s customers don’t have to maintain two social networks with two separate address books of friends. I believe that is why Ping hasn’t taken off the way Apple had intended it to.
I started to use Ping when it was introduced in September for all of about two seconds. I setup my account with Ping and added friends, but it would have been much better if I could have just integrated my Facebook friends with Ping. I guess Steve Jobs is looking to be the bigger man here, and further Apple’s relationship with Facebook. What better way to do this then having two of Silicon Valley’s giants breaking bread together; that could more than likely be financially beneficial for both parties involved.
Photo Credit: Facebook and iTunes work together
