Story highlights Report: Apple's social network Ping will be gone in the next release of iTunes

Ping has been poorly received from the beginning

The network had issues with spam and lacked many artist profiles

Apple's social network Ping will be gone in the next release of iTunes, reports All Things Digital , citing sources close to the company.

Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted that Apple has all but given up on Ping in May, though he didn't precisely say whether Apple will kill the service.

"We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said this isn't something I want to put a lot of energy into," said Cook

Unlike Apple's hardware and software products, most of which have been tremendously successful in the last couple of years, the company's social network has been poorly received from the very beginning.

Besides the fact it was available only to a limited subset of iTunes users, it also had issues with spam and a serious lack of artist profiles

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