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It’s not as mysterious as it seems, this mini-controversy about finding friends on Facebook for Apple’s new social music network.

According to sources familiar with Facebook’s platform, the social networking giant essentially denied Apple’s Ping access to application programming interfaces that would allow it to search for an iTunes user’s friends on Facebook who also had signed up for Ping.

Normally, this API access is open and does not require permission.

That is, unless some entity wants to access it a lot. In that case, Facebook requires an agreement for reasons primarily centered on protection of Facebook user data and, of course, infrastructure impact.

With 160 million iTunes users, that could potentially mean a lot of impact.

Sources said Apple (AAPL) and Facebook conducted negotiations about an agreement, but could not come to terms.

At the launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs complained to me about what he called “onerous terms” that Facebook had demanded for the friends connection and suggested using search or email to add friends to Ping.

But, at the same event another exec, Worldwide Product Marketing SVP Phil Schiller, said to me in a video interview that one could use Facebook to find friends on Ping.

In fact, Apple still included the ability to find Facebook friends in its demo onstage and also after it made iTunes 10 available for download.

It also currently claims this on its Ping page: “Find even more music fans with a quick search, by sending email invites, or by connecting to your Facebook account.”

But you can’t actually do that on Ping right now.

Sources said Apple went ahead with a plan to access the Facebook APIs freely, but Facebook blocked it since it violated its terms of service.

When that happened, it seems Apple pulled the plug on the connection with Facebook friends.

But maybe not for long. Sources also said the companies were still in discussions about putting the more robust Facebook Connect feature in Ping.

Because, in the end, it is all about connection.

BoomTown has requests into both Facebook and Apple for a comment.

Earlier today, Facebook said:

“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

By John Murrell

Take-Two Interactive whupped the tarnation out of its own guidance for its fiscal third quarter today, thanks largely to the success of Red Dead Redemption, the Old West action-adventure game that was released in May and has sold almost 7 million units since. Instead of coming in between $250 million and $300 million, as the company expected, Q3 revenue hit $354.1 million, and non-GAAP net income was 28 cents a share, not the predicted loss of 10-20 cents a share. Guidance for Q4 and the full year has been raised appropriately.

Remember the Walkman? Evidently, Japan does, because Sony’s (SNE) digital music player has outsold Apple’s (AAPL) iPod there for the first time in more than four years, according to research outfit BCN.

Sony’s share of the market for digital music players in Japan rose to 47.8 percent during August, surpassing the 44 percent captured by Apple. “This is the first time that the Walkman outsold the iPod in monthly sales [since Apple launched the device],” said BCN analyst Eiji Mori.

Sadly for Sony this victory will likely be a short-lived one. With the latest iPod refresh now official, consumers who postponed their purchases in anticipation of new Apple hardware will help the company dethrone Sony once again.

By Owen Fletcher, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co., China’s two biggest telecommunications hardware makers, said they will offer new mobile devices that use Google (GOOG) Inc.’s Android operating system, with ZTE saying it plans to release a tablet computer akin to Apple (APPL) Inc.’s iPad.

ZTE’s Android-powered tablet will be available later this year in Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, He Shiyou, head of ZTE’s mobile terminals business, said in an interview Thursday. The device, internally called the V9, will have a seven-inch screen, and ZTE later will look to offer similar products in North America, he said.

Meanwhile, Huawei announced four new Android-powered mobile phones that appear aimed at beating the prices of rival Android smartphones.

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While I am sure there is a better video of this on the Apple site, here are the three songs that Coldplay frontman Chris Martin did at the Apple music event, held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco yesterday.

If you look carefully to the left, looking at the stage, you can see Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs grinning away at the performances of “Yellow,” “Viva La Vida” and a new one, which I think Martin said was called “Wedding Bells.”

In one of many very funny remarks he made onstage, Martin–who is married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow and with whom he has two children, Apple (named after the fruit, not the company) and Moses–thanked Jobs and Apple iTunes for helping make some of his songs into hits, noting, “It proves you can market anything.”

Enjoy:

[ See post to watch video ]

Steve Jobs says Ping is supposed to be a “social music discovery” service: You share your musical taste with friends and vice versa. But if you really want to share, you’re going to find it harder than you think.

This isn’t about Apple’s walled garden that keeps Ping walled off from Facebook and other services. It’s about Apple’s decision to wall off Ping from your own music collection.

Steve Jobs’s demo yesterday gave the impression that Ping would link up with users’ iTunes music player and library. But Ping only cares about what you do on the iTunes Store–it has no idea what you actually listen to and like.

If you buy something at iTunes, you can tell your pals. And if you want to recommend something, and you can find it in Apple’s store, you can click on the link there and talk it up.

But if it doesn’t happen in the store, it doesn’t happen at all.

You can see why Jobs, who has made a point of playing up Apple’s privacy bona fides in recent months, wouldn’t want to automatically peek into people’s iTunes collections. And Apple’s “Genius” feature, an opt-in service that does track what you play on iTunes, makes a point of not connecting that data to your name and account information. But it would make a lot of sense to let people choose to open up their library.

Because, as Apple knows very well, most people fill their iTunes collection with music they acquire from every source but the iTunes store.

“97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store,” Jobs wrote in 2007. Hard to imagine it’s changed much since then.

You could go out of your way to tell Ping about what you do with your iTunes collection. But, again, if you’re inclined to do that, you’re probably already doing that somewhere else. Like on Facebook. Or a Tumblr account.

And if you don’t make the effort, Ping will know next to nothing about you, because Apple has blindfolded the service. Another metaphor, via Debcha on Twitter: “Basing my musical tastes on my iTunes downloads is like judging my eating habits by what I buy at highway rest stops.”

Maybe Jobs thinks that Ping users will be happy with rest-stop recommendations. My hunch is that he plans on fleshing it out over time, trading privacy for utility. We’ll see….

[Image credit: Billy Rowlinson]

Hip-hop star and noted role model Snoop Dogg is now lending his considerable moral authority to the fight against cybercrime. He’s teamed up with security software vendor Symantec (SYMC) to host an anti-cybercrime rap video contest.

Dubbed “Hack is Wack,” the competition invites aspiring law-loving lyricists to bust some malware rhymes on video for a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to L.A. to see a Snoop concert and “meet with select members of Snoop Dogg’s management team,” plus every gangsta’s dream: A Toshiba laptop with full Norton security suite (word to your sysadmin, yo).

“We’re trying to get people to raise awareness by making a rap song about cybercrime,” Snoop Dogg told Security Week, noting that his brand will inevitably bring mass attention to this important issue. “Come on man, you know when my team come after you, we gonna get you.”

My God, what an unfortunate alliance this is. I had no idea street cred was so important to the antivirus software industry.

What the hell is Symantec’s PR team smoking, you ask?

Evidently some of the same stuff Snoop is so fond of.

QOTD: Dear Steve: We Don’t Fudge Numbers and We’re Not Your Friend [Digital Daily]

“We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs suggests Google might be over-reporting Android activation numbers

“The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.”

– A Google spokesperson says the company is actually under-reporting them

By Roger Cheng, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Samsung Electronics Co. on Thursday unveiled the Galaxy Tab, its take on Apple Inc.’s iPad, as more technology companies trickle into the nascent tablet market.

Tablets represent a potential new source of revenue for Samsung, which is making up for lost ground in the intensely competitive smartphone business.

Rather than sell it directly to consumers, Samsung will rely on its carrier partners to sell the Galaxy Tab, which runs on Google Inc.’s Android software, comes with a cellular connection, and features a seven-inch screen. The tablet will debut in Italy, moving to other markets as Samsung locks in more carrier deals.

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And just like that the bidding war for 3Par is over. Moments ago, Dell said it would not raise its offer for the data storage provider in response to Hewlett-Packard’s latest $33-per-share bid. “We took a measured approach throughout the process and have decided to end these discussions,” Dave Johnson, Dell’s Senior Vice President of corporate strategy, said in a statement (embedded in full, below).

And so, after a weeks-long pitched battle, HP (HPQ) has won 3Par (PAR). Final price: $2.4 billion.

Earlier this morning, Dell (DELL) raised its bid for 3Par to $32 per share, only to have it trumped hours later by a $2.4 billion, $33-per-share counteroffer from HP. 3Par declared that bid superior and Dell allowed it to stand, withdrawing from negotiations and making arrangements to collect its $72 million breakup fee.

PREVIOUSLY

• Hewlett-Packard Raises 3Par Bid — Again
• Will Dell Bail on 3Par?
• HP’s New Bid For 3Par: $30 per Share. 3Par’s New Share Price: $31.44.
• HP Raises 3Par Bid to $27 Per Share
• After Harried Sofa-Cushion Search, Dell Outbids HP for 3Par
• Dell Has Three Days to Top HP’s 3Par Bid
• Dell Prepping Higher Bid for 3Par
• HP, Dell in Bidding War for 3Par
• Dell Buys 3Par for $1.15 Billion

Dell Declines to Revise Bid for 3PAR, Ends Acquisition Discussions

ROUND ROCK, Texas, Sep 02, 2010 — Dell announced today that it will not increase its most recent proposal to acquire 3PAR, and that Dell has ended its discussions regarding a potential acquisition. Dell is entitled to receive a $72 million break-up fee from 3PAR upon the termination of its merger agreement.

Dell’s final offer to acquire 3PAR was not accepted by 3PAR’s board of directors. Dell’s improved offer included a proposed commercial relationship and an increased break-up fee.

“We took a measured approach throughout the process and have decided to end these discussions,” said Dave Johnson, senior vice president, corporate strategy.

“We will continue to put the interests of our customers and shareholders at the forefront of all our decisions,” said Brian Gladden, chief financial officer. “Our focus is to create long-term value.”

Dell is focused on creating open, affordable and capable enterprise solutions designed to help customers. The company has an industry-leading portfolio of enterprise solutions, including servers, storage, networking and services. Dell’s commercial enterprise solutions revenue grew 43 percent year over year in the company’s second fiscal quarter and is now a $17 billion annualized business.

“We believe our strategy of creating open, affordable and capable solutions resonates well with customers and will enable us to continue to outgrow the industry,” said Mr. Johnson.

The plot thickens!

While two official Apple pages tout an ability to use Facebook to find friends on Ping–its new social music offering in ITunes–which would be very useful, the feature is now not available on the service.

CEO Steve Jobs, in fact, told me at the Apple (AAPL) event where Ping–and more–was unveiled yesterday that the lack of Facebook connection was due to unspecified “onerous terms” that the social networking giant had sought and Apple declined.

Which is why it is odd that Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller said in the interview below, which I also did at the confab minutes apart, that “you can use your Facebook contacts to find friends who are also on Ping and hook up to them.”

So what happened? A last-minute yanking of Facebook funtionality, it appears, after it was launched.

BoomTown has inquiries into all the parties, but until then, here is my video interview of Schiller talking about Ping’s Facebook love, before it was spurned in a Silicon Valley mystery and more, from yesterday:

[ See post to watch video ]

Why isn’t Ping playing with Facebook? It’s Facebook’s fault, says Apple CEO Steve Jobs: The social network demanded “onerous terms” to connect with Apple’s social music play.

But clearly there’s more to the story.

Because while Facebook isn’t connected to Ping right now, it had been up through the service’s launch last night. And even for some time after that.

When Jobs demoed the service onstage yesterday, screenshots showed an ability to invite Facebook friends via the “Facebook Connect” service, as Business Insider’s Dan Frommer noted. And in an interview with Kara Swisher following the event, Apple marketing boss talked up the Facebook Connect option.

And, in fact, Apple’s promotional Ping page still mentions the ability to “find even more music fans with a quick search, by sending email invites, or by connecting to your Facebook account.”

And for a brief period after the service opened last night, new users did get a chance to invite friends via Facebook — you can still see the Facebook app page here.

I’m not sure that the service ever worked, though: When I tried the Facebook option, I got this puzzling error message: “We are unable to find any Facebook friends that you are not following on iTunes Ping. Check again soon.”

So. Anyone at Apple, or Facebook, want to clarify what happened?

The bidding war over 3Par is beginning to look more like a game of Texas Hold’em.

This morning Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) again raised its bid for the data storage provider, trumping a superior bid made by Dell (DELL) just hours before.

HP offered $33 a share for 3Par (PAR), surpassing Dell’s counteroffer of $32 a share and pushing the total value of the deal to $2.4 billion. HP’s latest bid is more than three times 3Par’s $9.65 closing price on Aug. 13, the day before Dell’s first bid was revealed.

PREVIOUSLY

• Will Dell Bail on 3Par?
• HP’s New Bid For 3Par: $30 per Share. 3Par’s New Share Price: $31.44.
• HP Raises 3Par Bid to $27 Per Share
• After Harried Sofa-Cushion Search, Dell Outbids HP for 3Par
• Dell Has Three Days to Top HP’s 3Par Bid
• Dell Prepping Higher Bid for 3Par
• HP, Dell in Bidding War for 3Par
• Dell Buys 3Par for $1.15 Billion

My memories of “Beverly Hills 90210″ are fuzzy and not really resonant at all. I had zero idea, for instance, that it ran for 10 (!) years.

But Twitter tells me that for some of you, the show was a very big deal. (“I love that show more than life,” a person, who may want to go unnamed, told me this morning.)

Which makes today’s date a giggle. I guess. Apparently even CNBC thinks it’s worth noting (or perhaps there is very little business news on the Wednesday before Labor Day).

In any event, for those of you who care, a look back at the show via Twitter: Opening credits for Season 1, opening credits for Season 5 and the scene so many of you seem to enjoy so much.

In a surprisingly quick and even stealthy move, AOL has renewed and expanded its search agreement with Google, even though many had expected there to be more-competitive bidding throughout the fall to win the deal.

The five-year partnership to provide search technology and search advertising by powering AOL Search is more wide-ranging than the one it replaces, also including improved search products, global search, mobile search and also a video-distribution arrangement with YouTube, which could evolve over time to include content partnerships.

“We have tried to make a deal that has 100 percent alignment on what we each do best,” said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in an interview last night with Boomtown. “At the end of the day, Google checked all the boxes.”

The search partnership between AOL (AOL) and Google (GOOG)–the third since 2002 actually–was set to run out December 19.

Thus, AOL had been talking for months with a number of new partner possibilities, especially with Microsoft (MSFT) about using its Bing search service for AOL.

Microsoft has been trying to improve its market share with the innovative Bing and has made great strides.

But, despite a valiant effort so far, it is still the No. 3 search engine, with about 11 percent of the market share, according to the latest comScore (SCOR) report for July, compared to 66 percent for Google and 17 percent for Yahoo (YHOO).

Adding AOL would have been a plus for Microsoft, since it has a 2.3 percent share.

But Armstrong said a deal was worked out early once AOL got what it wanted from Google, which certainly had the inside track in terms of experience in working with AOL.

Nonetheless, AOL had started the process of re-evaluating who it would pick to serve its search needs late last summer and had planned for a process to last closer to when the Google deal expired.

In April, Armstrong said, AOL re-engaged with all potential partners worldwide, which he said numbered a half-dozen.

He declined to name them, but sources said the other companies included Yahoo, as well as China’s Baidu.

The talks with Google were turbocharged when Armstrong–who, ironically, was one of the key Google execs who negotiated the first AOL deal, when he headed U.S. ad sales there–met with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at the Allen & Co. conference earlier this summer in Sun Valley, Idaho.

The deal moved quickly after that, with Armstrong wanting AOL to get access to the search innovation pipeline at Google, rather than just receive a more basic product.

He would not say if Google guaranteed search ad revenues in the deal, but sources said it has similar terms to the previous deal, which did include them.

The video part of the deal puts AOL content more prominently on YouTube and presumably it will be better programmed. AOL and Google will share ad revenue on the premium videos.

The mobile details are still being worked out, but will likely be served via Google’s mobile technology from its AdMob acquisition.

Armstrong admitted Google had the advantage from the start, especially since it knew how AOL Search performed, although early talks between the companies were initially rocky.

Perhaps that was due to the massive writedown in 2009 of the $1 billion investment Google–a key part of its previous search deal–had made in 2005 for a five percent stake in AOL, when it was still owned by Time Warner (TWX).

Armstrong also noted he wanted to avoid a lot of attention and uncertainty a bidding war would surely create.

“We had a no-drama policy on this,” said Armstrong. “And, as it turned out, this was not a single, not a double, not a triple, but a home run for us.”

Here is a detail-free–with promise of more to come–8-K filing AOL submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on its new deal with the Silicon Valley search behemoth:

var docstoc_docid="53197918";var docstoc_title="AOLInc";var docstoc_urltitle="AOLInc";
AOLInc

Here is the official press release on the new Google-AOL deal:

AOL AND GOOGLE RENEW AND EXPAND GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and NEW YORK, NY–September 2, 2010–Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) today announced a five-year renewal and expansion of one of the largest and longest-standing partnerships in Internet history. The global alliance, which has at its core Google’s provision of search services to AOL’s content network and properties, in exchange for a revenue-sharing arrangement between AOL and Google, will be expanded to include mobile search and YouTube.

“Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL,” said Tim Armstrong, AOL’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “AOL users will be getting a better search and search ads experience from the best search company in the world–Google. After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”

“We’re excited to deepen our partnership. This agreement combines Google’s expertise in search and advertising with AOL’s strength in online content,” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Google. “It’s particularly exciting to see our relationship expand into video and mobile. These areas are now at the heart of users’ online experiences and at the core of both of our businesses.”

The partnership includes a broad range of features that will improve and expand the products and services offered to consumers.

· Search Products: Google will provide AOL with additional features and enhancement to its leading Web search products that will improve the consumer search experience across AOL’s network of sites.

· Advertising Products: Google will provide AOL with best-in-class ad formats, giving AOL consumers a better, more relevant ad experience.

· Mobile Search: As AOL renews its focus on mobile apps and content, the companies will work together to expand the alliance to cover mobile search.

· YouTube: AOL and YouTube have agreed to a content partnership that will bring AOL’s video content to YouTube.

· Global Focus: The alliance is international in scope and will provide improved experiences to AOL’s worldwide audience.

Apple (AAPL) events are typically heavy on metrics, and yesterday’s affair was no exception. In fact, it was more abundant with the stats than most I’ve seen, with CEO Steve Jobs trotting out quite an array of big milestone numbers with which to mark the company’s achievements. Here’s a list of most of them.

• 300 Apple Stores in 10 countries (soon to be 11)
• More than 1 million visitors to those stores on some days
• 120 million iOS devices sold since the first iPhone debuted
• 230,000 iOS devices activated each day
• 6.5 billion apps downloaded from the App Store to date
• 200 apps downloaded from the App Store each second
• 1.5 billion games and entertainment downloads to the iPod touch alone
• 250,000 apps currently available in the App Store
• 25,000 of those are iPad apps
• 275 million iPods sold to date
• 160 million active iTunes accounts
• 12 million songs in the iTunes store
• 11.7 billion songs downloaded from iTunes
• 450 million TV episodes downloaded via iTunes
• 100 million movies downloaded via iTunes
• 35 million books downloaded via iTunes
• The iPod touch is the No. 1 mobile gaming device worldwide, outselling the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP combined
• Apple’s share of the portable gaming market: 50 percent

Yesterday, at the Apple music event in San Francisco, I had a short chat with Apple CEO Steve Jobs as he strolled through the demo room for the media, just after he had announced various updates for the iPod, Apple TV and iTunes onstage.

One of the those was the introduction of a new social network for music called Ping that Apple (AAPL) has integrated within iTunes 10 and which looks an awful lot like the experience you get on Facebook.

Essentially, it is a vertical version–in this case for music–of the powerful social networking site.

Facebook has noodled for years about creating its own social music offering, including doing a partnership with Lala, which was bought by Apple last year and shuttered in June.

But its efforts have largely gone nowhere.

And Facebook is nowhere on Ping, either. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebook–or Twitter or MySpace–on Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions went nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted “onerous terms that we could not agree to,” related to connecting with Facebook friends on Ping.

For those who are struck by the word, the definition of onerous, according to an online dictionary: “Involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome; Involving heavy obligations.”

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate connecting with Facebook or even using Facebook Connect–which would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

“We could, I guess,” he shrugged.

And when I asked how to find friends, Jobs offered, noting iTunes had 160 million users across the globe: “You can type their names into search or send them emails inviting them to join.”

Okay, although being more open would work too!

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted:

“Maybe Apple plans on joining the rest of the Web, via an open API that will let Facebook, Twitter et al–maybe even the to-be-launched Google (GOOG) music service–play nicely with Ping. We’ll see.”

Facebook–including some execs who are definitely irked about how closely Ping resembles Facebook, right down to the blue color scheme–hopes so.

Consider the statement issued by Facebook to me–after attempts to get it verbally failed, due ironically to several dropped connections on the iPhone of the exec I spoke to:

“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

In other words: Zing, Ping.

UPDATE: Oddly enough, a Facebook connection feature appeared to be in Ping when some signed up–not for me–as noted by Cult of Mac. And Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer even spotted the wording in Jobs’s stage presentation. I have an email into Apple PR asking for a comment on the change.

In any case, at the Apple event, Jobs told me he had great hopes for the social music service, adding that Ping could be the most significant thing to come out of yesterday’s announcements.

But soon enough he moved right on to the new iPods, declaring enthusiastically: “Isn’t the nano amazing?”

Here is a lovely movie from the Apple iPod, iPad, iTunes, TV and, now, Ping event yesterday in San Francisco.

(Yes, this is a photo of me channeling Walt Mossberg in a chat with CEO Steve Jobs in the demo area.)

It includes the you-are-there shots of Jobs onstage, as well as scenes from the media throng and more, as the tech giant unveiled updates, additions and renovations of older stuff and also launched new stuff.

Such as Ping, the social music service in iTunes 10, which starred Apple (AAPL) PR impresario Katie Cotton’s profile in the demo itself. She was unflappable, even after I told her I was a Fanilow.

It is all in the video below:

[ See post to watch video ]

By Geoffrey A. Fowler and Sam Schechner, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) cut the price on some downloaded TV shows to 99 cents from $2.99 in the wake of Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) announcement Wednesday it will begin streaming some shows for 99 cents.

Amazon’s new prices affect more than 260 shows from the Walt Disney Co.’s (DIS) ABC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, and the BBC, matching a similar selection promised by Apple when it unveiled a new Apple TV device. Unlike Apple, which plans to rent videos, Amazon allows users to purchase the videos to own.

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By William Gibson, Author, Neuromancer

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” said the search giant’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial interview. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

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