Late last evening, Apple released iTunes 10 and its new Ping social network to the public. Assuming you were able to access the service, you may have noticed the ability to add friends via Facebook Connect, a feature we mentioned in our first-impressions post last night.
That feature disappeared earlier this morning, as first noted by Peter Kafka. So where did the feature go and why did it disappear?
According to AllThingsD, Facebook was responsible for turning off Apple’s access to its Facebook Connect API. Typically this API is open to just about any application developer. However, with higher-volume apps (think social games and services with lots and lots of users), Facebook apparently requires a special agreement for these kinds of connections.
According to AllThingsD’s sources, an agreement between Apple and Facebook couldn’t be reached, so Facebook cut off access. Apple subsequently removed the feature from its service. Users can still be added by searching by name or via e-mail address. However, it’s important to note that the e-mail address is the one associated with a user’s iTunes account. I have a special iTunes-only address in place, which means that anyone who wants to follow me will have to use my name.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has turned off its data hose to another company. Twitter briefly introduced a Facebook follow feature before Facebook shut off access.
Apple and Facebook have worked together in the past, most notably with the Share via Facebook option first introduced in iTunes 9 and the App Store Facebook Page.
As it stands, if you did manage to use Facebook Connect with iTunes Ping last night, the app itself is still visible in Facebook and you can see which friends are also connected.
We would be surprised if this feature didn’t make a reappearance at some point. That’s a good thing, because Facebook is becoming the de facto social graph for many users and makes the friend discovery process much easier.
We’ve reached out to Facebook and Apple for comment on this particular issue.
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