Rolling iTunes Ping Thread 2010

Since we have a Rolling last.fm thread 2010 I figured this'll be of interest to ILM folks as well. Here's the scoop from the Gizmodo liveblog (http://live.gizmodo.com), which is covering Apple's music-related press/media event that's going on right now:

How do you find out about new stuff? “What are my friends listening to? What are my favorite artists up to? What concerts are my friends going to? I’ve got to share this with my friends!”

“There must be a better way.” Apple is announcing Ping. Ping is a social network for music.

“Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.”

It’s a social network built into iTunes about music. “Follow your artists and friends to discover the music they’re talking about, listening to and downloading.”

Once you click on Ping, you see the recent activity from your friends and artists you’re following.

You can get a custom top 10 chart of songs and albums that are customized for you–customized from the people you follow.

“Ping is for social music discovery.” You can follow people and be followed.

You can set up a circle of friends to share music with each other.

“The privacy is super simple to set up. Anyone can do it. It’s great.”

Open to 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries immediately.

Ping is not just available on your computer, it’s available on your iPhone and iPod touch. It shows up right in the iTunes store. You push the button and you get the recent activity on your i-device.

Still waiting for iTunes 10 to show up in updates. I wonder if it can read all the historical play count data in previous versions.

More details on the Apple site:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping

who's zoomin the zune

anyone planning on actually using this?

i'm still trying to figure out the rio

I just downloaded and "turned on" Ping, which made me feel kind of dirty.

Body oil and some Barry White.

yup this looks like some stupid shit.

Agreed. If I have to actually "purchase, review, rate, or like music on the iTunes Store" to use this fucking thing, then what's the point? Can't it just announce what I'm listening to, a la Last.fm?

I don't purchase music on iTunes and I'll be damned if I don't have better things to do than sit around rating/reviewing albums for the iTunes Store. Sounds like a ploy for Apple to increase its user review count/content.

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Agreed. If I have to actually "purchase, review, rate, or like music on the iTunes Store" to use this fucking thing, then what's the point? Can't it just announce what I'm listening to, a la Last.fm?

I have a feeling that the user base of Last.fm is far far smaller than that of iTunes, so if all a listener has to do is check a box and forget about it, Ping could easily supersede Last.fm in a short amount of time. I suspect that over time we'll see more features rolled into this.

On the other hand, this could strictly be a "me too" feature and nothing more. Apple was being criticized for not including Facebook, Flickr and YouTube options in iMovie and iPhoto, so Apple finally put them in - but in a very basic way that no one would take seriously. Criticism deflected and everyone went on their way.

Can't believe there's no way to find contacts. It's like the first month of friendster.

yeayh I'm not as dismissive of this as most people here. The social networking is cute but I can see this working partic well as minisites for bands you follow (a la myspace)

but yeah - how are u supposed to find people on this?

They initially had Facebook Connect as an option for finding your other friends who are already using it - but I guess they ended up dropping that because of some kerfuffle with Facebook over the terms of same. Poop. More here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/02/why-did-apple-take-facebook-connect-out-of-ping/

I'm signed up under my own name if anyone wants to follow (there should be a search option in the right-hand sidebar. If not, click the "People" link).

People are doing a lot of complaining right now that there's not much there - to be expected, from a user perspective at least, only 24 hours out from announcement (and less from availability of the software). So I'm waiting to pass final judgment on this.

There are certainly things they COULD have done to make it easier to use, like allowing you to "like" things from inside your music library, instead of forcing you to wade through the iTunes store to find things. (For what it's worth you don't have to have purchased them through iTunes to like them.)

I've signed up. Couldn't get a profile pic to load. Can't find anyone.

More importantly, the new iTunes logo is shit.

i won't be on this ping

Couldn't get a profile pic to load.

Me either.

More importantly, the new iTunes logo is shit.

It's grown on me!

Couldn't get a profile pic to load.

Same.

I don't purchase music on iTunes and I'll be damned if I don't have better things to do than sit around rating/reviewing albums for the iTunes Store. Sounds like a ploy for Apple to increase its user review count/content.

so why did you start this thread?

Because I hadn't seen exactly how it worked when I launched the thread, it had just been announced at the press conference ~5 min earlier. And I wanted a place to discuss it, either way. Maybe it'll improve over time?

can we have ping groups like on last.fm?

Ping pongs.

Tangential to this thread, some background on why Facebook was shut out at the last minute (and maybe an indication as to the overall importance of Ping/social networking to Apple in general)

Like I was saying upthread... despite all the shouting from social networking gurus as to how cool they are, Apple will only participate in this enough to keep people shopping at the iTunes store.

But will it work with my Zune?

the question that had to be asked

more leik WEAK ZING

The thing I kept wondering about Rick Rubin's "faves" was if it was an Apple employee posting them, or if Rick had an assistant who posted them, or how they worked that out. Obviously that takes somebody some time to do that data entry. i'd like to know what the deal was, for some reason my peace of mind demands it.

Ping taken out back and shot.

Apple has finally acknowledged what the market has been telling it since it first debuted Ping, its social network for music, in September of 2010. The service is a failure.
And rather than continue to maintain Ping, the company is abandoning it and using its partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to make its various software and service offerings social in a way that consumers actually care about.

Sources close to the company say that Ping, which still exists today in iTunes 10.6.3, will be gone with the software’s next major release, likely scheduled for this fall. And at that point Apple’s social networking offerings will shift to Twitter and new partner Facebook entirely.

And rather than continue to maintain Ping, the company is abandoning it and using its partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to make its various software and service offerings social in a way that consumers actually care about.

Makes me roffle so hard.

Really they should just sell Ping to Bing.

lol i never even HEARD of this!

people who insist apple never took a misstep in the jobs era want to be reminded of the ping revolution

bah let's not blow things out of proportion - Ping was a small half-hearted attempt to introduce some social element to iTunes. It didn't catch on, no biggie really

n the end, Ping was a social network that was focused far too much on enabling commerce, and far too little on enabling social interaction. It wasn’t easy to find and connect with people on Ping. And that didn’t resonate with Apple’s customers all.

Officially dead as of tomorrow. I would bow my head in honor but I feel more inclined to yawn into the grave.

ping is a gentle reminder that apple made plenty of cock-ups in the jobs era (see also mobileme, ipod hi-fi, removing 'save as')

Definitely.