Ping! Apple’s iTunes just got more social

While the buzz earli­er this week was all spec­u­la­tion about hard­ware changes and improve­ments, today Steve Jobs and Apple snuck in a poten­tially great enhance­ment to the iTunes eco­sphere — a little thing called Ping.

Basic­ally, Ping is Face­book for iTunes. It lives in iTunes, but lets you ‘get social’ with your media.

Ping Fea­ture List:

• Social music discovery
• Fol­low and be followed
• Circle of friends
• Post you thoughts and opinions
• Cus­tom song & album charts
• Over 17,000 con­cert listings
• 160 mil­lion iTunes users in 23 countries

The big and excit­ing fea­ture for me, is that Ping integ­rates into your iOS 4 device…that means you will have some Ping func­tion­al­ity on your iPod, iPhone and iPad. Can’t wait to check out the details on this.

And yes, if you’re famil­i­ar with the way most social media net­works work, you’ll be quite at-home in iTunes Ping.

Ping, as part of the newly released  iTunes, will be avail­able today.

This post of is one of many I pub­lish weekly at the Future Shop Techb­log. Read more of my stuff here.