R.I.P. Ping (September 2010-September 2012)

Like we told you back in June: Ping, Apple’s attempt to merge music and social chatter, is going away Sept. 30.

Apple officially announced the death of the service today,  and if you’re one of service’s remaining users, you’ll see for yourself if you click on the Ping link on the iTunes client. Don’t bother trying to find Ping on the Web, because Apple has already vanished the service’s tracks there.

You don’t need hindsight to figure out why Ping didn’t work — the most obvious problem with the service was that it didn’t sync up with the world’s most popular social network. But now Facebook and Apple have worked out their differences, and there’s no need to keep Ping on life support anymore.

Here’s Tim Cook’s obituary for the service, delivered this spring at All Things Digital’s D10 conference: “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.'”