It was there, ever so briefly, a nice button that would let you import your Facebook friends into Ping with the click of a button. I even managed to use it to find all of 2 or 3 people from Facebook who were using Ping, but by the morning after iTunes 10 was released, it was gone, no longer could you import your friends from Facebook.
I couldn’t remember if I had imagined the Facebook connection, or if it had actually existed, but the fact that it was gone was pretty annoying. Instead of being able to automate the process of importing your friends, you now had to search for them by name or email address, how Web 1.0, heck it’s probably Web 0.5.
Rumours finally trickled in, and it came to light that Apple wasn’t too pleased with the terms that Facebook was trying to have Apple Inc. agree to in order to use their tools in iTunes, Jobs even claimed that the deal fell apart at the last minute because of “onerous terms” from the Facebook group. The reason Facebook integration was available initially in iTunes? Apple was trying their hand at some hackery with Facebook’s API, it didn’t last long, but if you were quick, you could import your friends.
Almost a month later, Facebook executives still believe that a deal could be reached between Apple and Facebook. Facebook CTO Bret Taylor has even gone so far as to say that he’s “very confident” that the two can work out a deal.
So, here’s the big question… how fast can it get done? I’m probably not alone in being a little bit annoyed that finding friends on Ping is so difficult.
Article via Business Insider and Cult of Mac
