Social networking is apparently Apple's new motif. The company has filed six social networking patents in the past year. The development of social networking apps are a key part of plans for the next generation iPhone 5 and iPad 2. <a href="http://dock-of-bay.blogspot.com/2011/01/iphone-5-ipad-2-to-focus-on-social.html">Read more</a>
I will be interested to see if Apple focuses more on other social networks or really tries to push Ping on us. So far Ping has nothing to offer me personally. I see it as a glorified music store. Apple has the resources to make a great social network, but it seems like they just haven't put much thought into it.
It seems to me that most of the social networks seeing any success now (Twitter, Instagram, etc..) are just breaking down an element from Facebook (statuses, pictures) and then making that their focus. There's no real creativity there, just expanding on a good idea. Truthfully that was how Facebook started anyway.