In a Friday press release, the Cupertino, California-based Apple revealed that its Ping social network for music touched over one million users within the first 48 hours of the new feature’s debut.

Ping, which was described as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes” by the Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Wednesday key note, chiefly allows users to follow artists as well as friends, to look for the music that is being purchased and listened to by others.

Ping, one of Apple’s Wednesday product announcements, has already received a mixed response from the industry – while some analysts are of the opinion that the feature “stole the show,” others raised doubts about the viability of the new music-centric social network.

In fact, Ping apparently has a ready audience, given the fact that there are nearly 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries. However, the Ping service is essentially an “opt-in” feature which can be availed after users after downloading the most recent iTunes version - iTunes 10.

Referring to the enviable launch of the Ping service, and saying that the service is likely to witness notable growth in the coming weeks as more users download iTunes 10, Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of Internet Services, revealed that “one-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping.”