Apple Woos Facebook For Ping Partnership

Steve Jobs reportedly wined and dined Mark Zuckerberg recently. On the menu? A discussion of Ping, and the possibility of a partnership with Facebook.

Apple's CEO invited Facebook's top executive to dinner about two weeks ago, according to the Los Angeles Times. An anonymous bystander later spotted the technology heavyweights walking together near Jobs' home in Palo Alto, Calif., the newspaper said.

Neither company would comment on any meeting between Jobs and Zuckerberg. But on Sept. 30, Facebook's chief technology officer Bret Taylor said he is "very confident" Facebook and Apple will determine a way to partner on Ping, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Before Ping's release, Apple and Facebook were in discussions about a partnership that would have given Ping immediate access to Facebook's vast user base. But negotiations broke down and, when Apple tried to use Facebook Connect -- available to all via the social network's API -- Facebook shut it down because Apple's usage did not comply with the company's terms, according to Facebook.

Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to," Jobs told BoomTown in early September, when the deliberations collapsed.

At its debut, Ping had about 1 million users -- but that represents only 0.63% of the 160 million iTunes users or a measly 0.2% of the 500 million Facebook users.