Like any self-respecting tech giant, Apple continues to pursue various social initiatives. Late last week, its iTunes-only website Ping added a new Social Playlists feature which lets users create lists of favorite songs, which they can then publish for followers to rate, review, and collaboratively edit. Still, with or without this latest feature, ReadWriteWeb calls Ping "Apple's half-hearted attempt at its own music-focused social networking site," and "incredibly unremarkable." Why? "Although iPad integration and Twitter connectivity was [sic] added last month, Ping still lacks Facebook connectivity for finding friends or sharing music socially," according to ReadWriteWeb. What's …

As anyone who's recently used Google should have noticed, the search giant is increasingly prioritizing its own content and services over that of rival companies. As The Wall Street Journal explains, "The Internet giant is displaying links to its own services -- such as local-business information or its Google Health service -- above the links to other, non-Google content found by its search engine." Google says the arrangement makes its broader service more useful for users. Rival companies, as you might imagine, beg to differ. "The moves mean Google increasingly is at odds with websites that rely …

A recent spate of hacking attacks is presenting new and unknown challenges for U.S. businesses and their online operations. Last week, sites like PayPay and Amazon came under attack for severing ties with WikiLeaks. Now, Gawker Media -- including founder Nick Denton, its staff and community of readers -- are being harassed for what the attackers call its "outright arrogance." Corresponding with Mediaite.com, a representative for hacker collective Gnosis essentially said it was offended by Gawker Media, and its disrespect for unaffiliated online message board 4chan. Gnosis, the spokesperson …

Reports detailing the rise of Netflix have been greatly exaggerated, or so top media executives tell The New York Times. "It's a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world?" Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes tells The Times. "I don't think so." For its part, The Times characterizes Time Warner as one a many "companies that make the shows and movies that Netflix delivers ... whose stocks have not enjoyed the same frothy rise, and whose chief executives have not won the same accolades," and who are now "pushing back, arguing that …

Twitter just released a year-end list of top trends, and, as CNet notes, it was not unaffected by Twitter's own promotional efforts. "A handful of the trends appearing in Hindsight 2010 were 'promoted' trends, a part of the advertising program that Twitter began to roll out this spring, and at least one was the result of an official media partnership with Twitter," writes CNet. As such, the rankings provide insight into Twitter's "ad" strategy, and how it can affect the entire microblogging ecosystem. Regarding Twitter's list of movie-related trends for the year, at least two -- "Scott Pilgrim vs. …

Among survey respondents who currently subscribe to print newspapers, there is a "statistically significant, moderately strong, positive correlation" between iPad news consumption and the likelihood of canceling their print subscriptions, according to new research from the Missouri School of Journalism. As Fortune notes, the results "bode well for news, not so well for the printed word." Worse still, among 1,609 Apple iPad owners surveyed, more than half (58.1%) of the respondents who subscribe to printed newspapers and use their iPad at least an hour a day for news said they are very likely to cancel their print subscriptions within …

Live video streaming service Justin.tv is now letting users upload the full resolution version of videos in the background, even as they're being broadcast live. "Justin.tv says its new update means that the archive version is only constrained by the capabilities of the device, so that no matter what the network conditions, the archive version of the video will be very high quality," writes VentureBeat. If it works, the feature will give Justin.tv on edge on competitors, including Ustream.TV, blogTV and Flixwagon. As VentureBeat notes, "Live streaming has become a particularly popular form of media consumption, with …

Irked at Android and its sub-par payment system, Rovio is launching its own in-app purchase, carrier-billing payment system with the help of Finnish carrier Elisa. With what will be called a Bad Piggy Bank, players of Rovio's hugely popular Angry Birds will be able to upgrade to an ad-free version of the game or buy its first virtual good -- the Mighty Eagle character -- with one tap. With 50 million downloads and counting (on iOS, Android, webOS and Symbian), the loss of Angry Birds' business represents a setback for Google's mobile operating system, notes GigaOm. Rovio …

In December of 2008, Research in Motion touted the BlackBerry as Verizon's best-selling device. Fast forward two years, and 80% of smartphone sales at Verizon are Android devices, according to ITG Investment Research analyst Matthew Goodman. Calling the shift "astonishing," Digital Daily writes of RIM: "In two years, it's gone from a flagship to a johnboat." Making Android's rise all the more remarkable, Digital Daily notes, "That's a huge percentage for a relatively new mobile OS in a very competitive market." For RIM, Digital Daily calls the trend "not yet dire," but indeed worrisome -- not to …

Like some doomsday pandemic, Facebook's global footprint is spreading like wildfire. Social media specialist Vincenzo Cosenza, who has spent the past year plotting the social net's proliferation, has just published another map - and it's freaking us out. "According to the updated statistics, Facebook is now the market leader in 115 out of 132 countries," All Facebook notes. At this point it has become pretty much common thought that there is no way to defeat Facebook's stranglehold on the social web. China and Russia continue to present challenges to Facebook's hegemony, however outside of China, Facebook is …