Apple’s social network for iTunes, Ping, is finally linking up with a social service that people actually use — Twitter.

An example of a tweet from Ping in Twitter

      Starting Thursday, users of Ping can link their accounts to Twitter, the microblogging service said. This means posts and reviews in Ping will be tweeted on the users’ Twitter feeds with links to the music on iTunes. When viewed on the Twitter website, tweets sent via Ping expand to let users play a preview of the song or link to iTunes to buy it. In addition, Ping users will be able to more easily find Ping accounts for their contacts on Twitter.

      The new partnership could help Apple get more people to use Ping, which has faced criticism as a social network that just isn’t very social. When it launched in September, it didn’t include the ability to link to either of the big social-networking sites — Twitter and Facebook.

      Twitter represents a step toward better integration with the social Web, but the big fish — Facebook — still remains absent from Apple’s service. After the Ping launch, Apple said Facebook prevented Ping from interacting with it, and Facebook has said the company is working with Apple on a resolution.

      It’s still not clear that Ping will catch on as a social-networking tool — or whether that’s exactly how Apple sees it. So far, Ping seems to be mainly about directing people to iTunes and promoting music. That’s not necessarily a bad idea for Apple, but it’s one that has quite a few critics. “It’s totally focused on commerce not community,” wrote Marshall Kirkpatrick at technology blog ReadWriteWeb.

      The companies did not provide information on any financial terms of the deal, and an Apple spokesman said the company didn’t have any further comment beyond the announcement made by Twitter.

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