Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg have dinner, talk Facebook for Ping

It looks like Apple's Steve Jobs and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg recently sat down over dinner to talk Ping. The LA Times reports:

Apparently Jobs invited Zuckerberg for dinner at his house to talk about Ping two weeks ago. That's when a tipster spotted them on a stroll in Palo Alto.

A passerby also reportedly saw the two taking a quick stroll around the block afterwards. Hopefully they were able to smooth things over a bit, and we also suspect as much, as Facebook CTO Bret Taylor recently stated that he felt "very confident" Facebook and Apple should be able to work out their relationship related to the two social/music networking services.

Ping, which launched with the release of iTunes 10, was supposed to include Facebook integration to help the new service garner quicker traction. There was speculation that the two companies had discussed a partnership up to 18 months prior to the launch of Ping. But this relationship quickly fizzled after Facebook blocked Ping's Facebook Connect feature shortly after the service was made available to iTunes users, and Apple quickly removed it.

So do think Apple and Facebook will come to terms with an agreement? And more importantly, do you think Google's Eric Schmidt will be upset his last coffee date is now having dinner with his arch rival?

[LA Times]

by Andrew Wray