Steve Jobs described it as ‘Facebook and Twitter, meet iTunes’.

The capabilities of Ping include:

• Social music discovery: you can share music you’re listening to and see music your friends are listening to
• Follow and be followed: you can follow, and be followed by, friends and artists
• Share your thoughts and opinions
• Custom song and album charts: See top 10 lists customized by what your followers are listening to
• Over 17,000 concert listings: You can see upcoming concerts, and share concerts you are attending
• Easy integration with the iPhone/iPod Touch
  
• Available immediately

Our first thought? “Sorry, MySpace.  It was nice knowing you…”  Our second thought: Could anyone but Apple do this? Doubtful.  When you have over 160 million active accounts already using iTunes, it’s easy to see how this could catch on.  And before you cite Facebook’s half-billion users, consider that iTunes number doesn’t include the millions who download the software just as a music player/organizer/podcast feeder and never buy anything.

From the following screenshots, you can get a look at Ping, and see that it integrates seamlessly with the iPhone/iPod Touch.

The first screen shows an artist’s page, own-able by the performers themselves, which you can easily imagine would be a boon to the fan relations of all acts, big and especially small:

Next, the individual profile page, where you can share your musical taste with your friends and followers, even showing them what shows you’ll be going to.  This represents a tremendous opportunity, again for artists, but also for fan meetups and peer networking:

Finally, the ubiquitous “feed” page, where you see the most recent updates from the people you follow, what they’re listening to and what they’re buying:

Still think “how did we live without this?” is a bit hyperbolic?  Let us know your thoughts while we furiously refresh the iTunes download page.

- Thomas (@thomasmcdonald) & Anna (@alucas9)

iPad:

On Wednesday, Apple had their much anticipated press conference, where Steve Jobs introduced apple’s latest product, the iPad. Here’s the facts:

• 9.7 inch display
• Runs iPhone apps
• Can be used as an eReader
• Holds music, photos, and movies
• Has Wi-Fi capabilities
• Comes in 3 different memory sizes
• Starts at $499

The verdict? Well, according to Twitter, it’s split down the middle. A study from Trendrr revealed that 48% of tweeters reacted positively to the iPad unveiling & 52% did not.

Twitter’s Local Trends:

After a test roll out last week, Twitter has finally made local trends available to all. As of now, everyone can view trending topics for 15 different cities and 6 different countries. So, if you want to see real time results of what’s trending in D.C., or even Brazil, now you can. Worldwide trending is still available, and Twitter is working to get more locations added to the list.  Learn more from Twitter’s Blog spot here.

The Facebook Friend Study:

An interesting study documented this week says our brains can’t keep up with the amount of friends we have on Facebook. It’s similar to a study done in the 1990’s known as Dunbar’s number, which concluded that the human brain is only capable of managing friendships with 150 people. The study is now in the process of being done again, and this time it’s taking online relationships into account, such a Facebook friends. The preliminary findings are out, and the interesting thing is that it appears nothing has changed…our brains are still only capable of maintaining 150 relationships- be it online or offline.

Data Privacy Day:

Yesterday, January 28, 2010, was International Data Privacy Day. Data Privacy Day is a day used to raise awareness and promote online privacy education. Many social media publications “celebrated” by providing a bit of privacy education. AllFacebook has an article on the 5 Facebook Privacy Tips You Need To Know Now, Wired has an article discussing the necessity of safe passwords, and a ReadWriteWeb wrote an article on some of the issues with privacy online.

LinkedIn’s Connection Browsing Updates:

It was announced this week that LinkedIn will soon be rolling out new ways to browse connections. LinkedIn is adding a panel that makes it easier to browse contacts by location, company, or industry. The social networking site  is also tagging connections with keywords, such as “colleague”, “classmate”, and “friend,” and has added an option to browse by recent activity.

-Anna (@alucas9)