San Francisco — It was only a matter of time before music started appearing in tweets. Avid Microblogging website Twitter said on Thursday that users should prepare for a potential barrage of musical tweets after Apple’s social network Ping and Twitter announced a partnership today.
Apple unleashed the new music-focused social network Ping in September, chief executive Steve Jobs described it as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.” It works within Apple’s iTunes music program and lets users follow artists and recommend songs to their chosen circle of friends.
Twitter announced in its blog:
“Starting today Ping, iTunes’ new social network for music, and Twitter are making it even easier for people to share music discoveries with their friends by putting Ping activity, song previews and links to purchase and download music from the iTunes Store right in their Tweets on Twitter.com.”
Ping empowers users to view photos and videos of their favorite musicians, receive information about concert dates and connect with other users to chat about albums and songs and make musical recommendations.
Twitter said its more than 175 million registered users can now couple their accounts to Ping within iTunes, empowering them to put song previews and links to purchase music from the iTunes store will appear directly in their messages, which are known as “tweets.”
“Once you have coupled the accounts, whenever you Post, Like, Review, or tell your friends why you purchased a song or album on Ping, this activity will also be tweeted to your Twitter followers,” Twitter said in a blog post.
“When you click on a tweet that is transmitted via Ping or that contains an iTunes link, you will see the song or album in Twitter’s details pane, with the ability to listen to song previews from iTunes, making the experience even richer,” it said.
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According to technology blog TheNextWeb, “this announcement could make a huge difference” in terms of Ping adoption. When Ping came out, more than a million users signed up in less than 48 hours.
Twitter’s integration with Ping comes after Apple failed to strike a similar partnership with social networking leader Facebook, which has more than 500 million users. Twitter seems to be taking advantage of that mishap in September with a partnership of its own.
Twitter, which allows users to shoot off messages of 140 characters or less, has been blessed with skyrocketing popularity since it was launched in 2006 by Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone and now has over 160 million users.
Facebook declined to comment on Thursday.