Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces a
new version of Apple TV at an event
in San Francisco.

Chatter about Google's social networking ambitions has been ubiquitous for months, but without warning a different Silicon Valley giant has pitched into competition with Facebook: Apple.

At an event Wednesday in San Francisco, Steve Jobs introduced Ping, which he described as "a social network for music."

"It's Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes," he explained--a line that might not impress if it came from a college dropout pitching a startup idea. Coming from Jobs it's a little more striking.

Some 120 million iTunes users can opt into the service. It lets people create a profile, based on their music choices, and get updates on their friends' purchases or reviews of music sold via iTunes. It's a social network that could be the same size as MySpace at launch, and it easily could pay for itself: Ping users are a click away from spending money at all times. Updates on friends' purchases on your news feed page feature a "buy" button. Artists also get profile pages and can be followed--a feature with the potential to take away MySpace's most loyal and valuable user base.

Jobs didn't take one potentially huge step -- to open iTunes up for streaming music. Even so, as is traditional he had "one more thing" to wrap his presentation. Or as he put it, "actually, it's one more hobby," raising chuckles from the crowd. That was a reference to a much-mocked past remark about Apple TV, the company's largely unsuccessful attempt to sell a system that can funnel video content to TVs.

Part of the problem, said Jobs, was that people found synchronizing and configuring the first-generation Apple TV box too much like setting up a computer. "This is a hard one for people in the computer industry to understand, but it's easy for consumer to understand," he said, in a none-too-subtle dig at Google TV devices that are set to appear this fall.

Apple's second attempt will cost $99 whereas the original cost $229. It is also fully a quarter of the size of the first generation and does away with storing TV and movies altogether. Everything is rented and the prices are low: just 99 cents for a TV show. Apple's most significant achievement might be that it has persuaded some big Hollywood content owners--ABC and Fox--to provide their TV shows such as "Glee" and "Bones" at this price in HD.

As I noted when Google announced its TV ambitions, persuading the owners of top-tier content to play along is the biggest challenge for a computer firm attempting to disrupt entertainment. Jobs acknowledged as much on stage: "This is a big step for the studios to make and not all of them wanted to take this step with us. We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board this with us."

If Apple TV 2.0 is a hit, it seems likely those studios will feel under pressure to do just that. The device will also stream movies from Netflix, another reason cable TV providers will be watching with interest.

The last word went to Coldplay's Chris Martin, wheeled out to play a few tunes on the piano. "Your marketing people can sell anything," he remarked, in reference to the way Apple helped the Coldplay song Viva La Vida become a hit (by making it available exclusively through iTunes initially, and then using it in an TV ad) after the band's label thought the track would be a dud. His point applies to Ping and the new Apple TV; whatever the technical merits or failings of the products, we know they will receive some of the slickest promotion on Earth.

A Google-Intel-Sony partnership will soon offer TVs and set-top boxes that make it easier to browse the Web on a TV, according to a report by The New York Times. The Google TV platform will be based on the Android operating system and will be open to developers, who will presumably be able to create downloadable TV apps, like games.

While some TVs and boxes already allow Web access, these generally don't offer full web surfing. Products that let you play video from a computer on a TV have also been around for a while. But the rising popularity of video sites like YouTube and Hulu.com may mean we'll be seeing more Internet options--potentially even related social networking services--on TVs. Logitech will offer a remote control with a tiny keyboard to aid in web surfing on Google TV.

Google's venture into TV was preceded by its Google TV Ads system, which sells ads on some televisions systems and figures out where an advertiser's ad should be placed based on keywords (similar to its web advertising). Several years ago, Google also tested a software which used a computer's built-in microphone to listen and identify audio from a user's TV to target related ads on the user's computer.

Yesterday, Panasonic sold its first 3-D HDTVs at Best Buy in New York. For about $3,000, you can get a 50-inch 3-D plasma TV, a 3-D Blu-ray player and one pair of 3-D glasses (additional ones are available for about $150). Just the day before, Samsung announced that it will be selling three versions of 3-D TVs within the month and Sony stated that it will roll out 3-D TVs this June in Japan.

Samsung's sets will range from $1,699 to $6,999 and it will offer more versions in the spring and summer (some versions are already offered in South Korea). To coincide with the release of its first 3DTVs, Sony plans to release 3-D gaming software, most likely for its Playstation 3 system.

3-D Home Theaters have been available from Mitsubishi since 2007, at prices ranging between $1,500 and $4,200. Mitsubishi has also recently demoed a Nvidia driver that converts PC games in 3-D on its screens.

With so many 3-D TVs on the way, viewers will need something to watch. Satellite TV service DirecTV confirmed that it will offer three 3-D channels in June, while sports network ESPN plans to broadcast the soccer World Cup in June on its new 3-D channel.

The research firm DisplaySearch predicts that 3-D TVs will grow from the 0.2 million units sold in 2009, to over 1.2 million units this year, to 64 million units by 2018, with revenues forecast to reach $22 billion dollars by then. Currently, 3-D TV sets require viewers to wear 3-D glasses, but at some point in the future, consumers may be able to watch 3-D TV glasses-free.