(Image courtesy of Engadget)

While Apple’s new Ping social networking service for iTunes 10 was launched with great fanfare three weeks ago, users were discouraged to find that Facebook integration was not part of the mix -- and still isn’t today. But if you think waiting a few more weeks might help, think again.

Business Insider is reporting that negotiations between Apple and Facebook to integrate the popular social network into the Ping service were ongoing for at least 18 months prior to the announcement of iTunes 10 a few weeks ago, much to the disappointment of social networking fans everywhere.

In the short term, that means the wait may be even longer -- three weeks after the arrival of Ping, and there’s no Facebook integration in sight. Business Insider theorizes that “Apple may have wanted to build Ping as a music-tracking and sales service on top of Facebook’s social graph,” but those plans were likely thwarted by what Apple CEO Steve Jobs referred to as “onerous terms that we could not agree to,” as reported at the time by All Things D’s Kara Swisher.

Apple apparently felt they could get around those terms by installing the public Facebook Connect log-in interface into Ping without a Facebook deal in place, but the social network almost immediately blocked Apple and the feature was yanked completely from iTunes 10.

Cupertino may not be the only company to hit a brick wall with Facebook -- the social giant apparently knows that its data is important and is not afraid to throw its weight around. “Working with Facebook as a large company is challenging at this stage, very similar to mid-late-‘90s Microsoft,” according to one unnamed Silicon Valley veteran.

Translation: Facebook loves startups, but once you get to big, they tend to be “increasingly demanding and abrasive,” as Business Insider puts it. That includes blocking Twitter from incorporating Facebook features into its own service and even friction with FarmVille creator Zynga, not to mention this more public fracas with Apple.

Given recent rumors that Facebook may or may not be developing their own mobile phone, it appears that the networking behemoth may be ready to take on Apple and others in the same way that Google has recently spread its wings into new territory. In the meantime, Ping users are advised not to hold their breath for now…

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