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Ping Could Be Apple's Social Networking Backdoor?
rsmiller510 writes "Could Apple's announcement about Ping, a music-based social network be Apple's social networking trojan horse? Facebook might want to be concerned." Of course it is.
Update: 09/02 19:26 GMT by T : Jamie points out this post on Daring Fireball, according to which Steve Jobs blames the non-integration on "onerous terms" suggested by Facebook.
ping www.apple.com
PING e3191.c.akamaiedge.net (184.84.45.15): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 184.84.45.15: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=31.528 ms
I'm just waiting to hear borked adoption rate numbers...it is integrated into iTunes 10, after all. Internet Explorer & Windows, anyone?
Living With a Nerd
Because when I look for a portal to Ping it seems they want me to download and install iTunes. Unless they intend to eventually make it accessible through a browser, I could see this being a bit of a problem for more than a few people. Great, you've got my credit card number if I bought something through iTMS but do you really think I'm going to wake up that memory and resource hog on my Windows partition just to get to a social networking site when I can hit Facebook through Linux or (nearly) any mobile device? I might be a small minority but that's not for me.
Looks to be just more bloat on an already bloated piece of software. The least they could do is modularize iTunes so that if I click a box on install I can make it so that the application is just a way to put music onto an iPod. I am sick and tired of the video and TV stuff forcing me to put Quicktime on my machine!
My work here is dung.
That's not quite accurate -- you said that Ping would kill Facebook. Without really knowing jack about it.
I still think that's funny and/or you're trolling, although I also think an article about Apple coming in through the backdoor is inherently funny and invites numerous lube jokes.
The problem is that all it is is a social shopping network. And of course it's a "social shopping at the iTunes store" network, so it's very, very limited. I personally think that Apple narrowed the scope of their network too much (you can't even post a link to a live video on YouTube of a song you just bought - or rather, you can but it will show up as text only with no way to click or copy&paste it) and most users will be bored by it very quickly and just ignore it. Even if Apple expands it later, a reputation once ruined is hard to improve...
It's the bloody Arc de Triomphe!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I thought we had learned our lessons in declaring X the Y Killer. Sure, its happened every now and then(see Myspace/Facebook, HDDVD/Bluray), but as everyone here knows (and many lament about), Microsoft is still alive and well despite a resurgence by Apple, iPhones are still selling despite the allegedly-killer swarm of Android devices, websites still get hits despite content being routed more and more into apps, etc.
So Apple will may have a competing service, and many may be happy because their data is more private, but free is more important than private. Look at home many people let google read their emails rather than paying Apple $100 a year.
Apple looks like it is going to use it's iTunes database to monetize users in an effort to offer otherwise free services to users. However, this is no different from the other free services, so that should provide no competitive advantage to either company, except for the fact that people expect to act better than facebook, even though most people whine when they have to pay to be treated better. Everyone wants a free lunch.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Why would I want to use this over Last.fm which doesn't lock me into an application, is accessible from my webbrowser and has plugins for about every media player around?
It arguably doesn't provide competition to Facebook aiming at a different audience altogether, but to me, judging from the article, it seems to be swimming in much the same waters as Apple's Ping.
strictly about music discovery and band discovery.
Steve Jobs is amazingly (obsessively? :-) focused on making up for what the record companies gave up on in the nineties, promotion.
Now that he's in a great position of power in the music industry, look for him to use "ping" to make an end-run around those same record companies which are run by accountants who treat artists and performers worse than livestock.
In return he gets to listen to great bands. (Remember, Apple in the seventies used to host music events.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Ping is only available in the iTunes Store proper, so you cannot 'like' a song, artist or album unless you are browsing the store. I don't have loads of time in the day to browse the store to build up likes for all the things I currently own, so whatever they get is only going to be based on newly purchased items. That may be good for their marketing team but it is lame as a social space.
iTunes might have 160 million users, but that doesn't mean they are ever going to use Ping. According to this logic, Google kicked facebook's ass with Buzz. There's a facebook app on all the iProducts. Every computer that can run iTunes has a browser that can access facebook. I open iTunes to rip a CD or listen to music, not connect with the rest of the world. I use my web browser for that. There's no compelling reason to switch. They'll get a bunch to sign up for Ping to see the "exclusive photos" and never use any other part of it.
"Jack Johnson had displayed from his latest tour and an exclusive video Lady Gaga made for her fans. This kind of direct access to artists is more powerful than Facebook Fan pages" ....unless the artist just posts the pictures and video to facebook. Comparing it to a facebook page run by a fan is just stupid. Bands are free to post whatever they want on facebook under their own page. Apple isn't offering anything new here, "exclusive content" is the AOL path to success.
Many people went to facebook because their friends are on facebook. There is not going to be a mass exodus from facebook to Ping, there isn't any reason to switch.
This sentence no verb.
I think Microsoft will sue Apple because of the name.
As they sued Mike Rowe Software for it's name being too similar to theirs.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
c:\>ping www.apple.com
Pinging www.apple.com [96.16.93.15] with 32 bytes
Request timed out. No Linux client
Request timed out. No mobile client
Request timed out. No universal browser access
Request timed out. Forced use of 80MB client software
Ping statistics for 96.16.93.15:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% fail)
yeah thats what i thought...
Beware the Lollipop of Mediocrity, Lick it once and you suck forever.
The problem is, who really -wants- to use iTunes on Windows? Out of all the commonly used software on Windows iTunes is the biggest resource hog of them all. Even on a moderately fast computer, iTunes still seems to lag like crazy and if you have a low-end computer good luck getting that to work. iTunes on OS X is a very nice program, but on Windows its a pain in the ass to use. I can get Facebook on my Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, iOS, Dumb-phone (via texting), BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, WebOS, Wii, PS3, etc. I can only get Ping through um... a single program only available for Windows and OS X (and probably later iOS)
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
please, the worst mistake to make in a market is assuming the next big product is going to kill it off.
It'd be more accurate that saying ping is apple's attempt to compete with facebook, because the details of how ping will actually work matter a lot more than just "We made our own social platform".
Disclaimer: I'm using iTunes 10 right now. Make of that what you will.
There's a lot to hate about Ping, mostly that it's what I like to call a "Potempkin Shopping Village of the Damned." It's there for little more than to allow people to show off their musical tastes and share with their friends. The fact that once you've shared a favorite song with your friends they can listen to a snippet and buy it on the spot <sarcasm class="eyeroll pshaw">is purely coincidental, I'm sure.</sarcasm> It's using the concept of "social networking" in a way that's so utterly cynical it's shocking, and we've got some primo cynics around here.
So yeah, evil evil evil. Insert as many "fanbois" as you think are necessary after that. (If you stick in two or more "gay"s, though, you're projecting.)
But then, as crovira points out, there's that bit where Mr. Jobs mentioned "discovery." That's the tilt. It's also where Ping could redeem itself if the users are judicious in its application. Yes, Lady Gaga and U2 and Yo Yo Ma and Katy Perry and Linkin Park and U2 (apparently, Apple really likes U2) are featured on the front page in their own box. Think of that as the sponsored advetising. The really important box is on every user's profile page, in the top right corner. This is where each user gets to recommend ten songs that exemplify their own musical tastes. Click one of those, a pop-up comes up allowing you to sample the tunes on that album, go to that album's page, buy it, review it, etc. In that space, artists like Voltaire, Abney Park, and Lemon Demon can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Roger Waters and Madonna, and could even win.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
At least apple has this part right, for now.
I don't think that is unfortunate for Apple, and I doubt Apple does either. It always happens with new Apple products that Slashdot lists out the people who won't or can't buy them.
Apple clearly does not care about certain parts of the market.
Someone above called Ping a social shopping network. That is what it is. It is the logical extension of the product 'reviews' already in itunes, half of which are reviews of previous reviews and people trying to engage in arguments. Move all that crap into a social network format so people can have product recommendations delivered to them in some sort of wall format.
So people who don't own computers and go to the library to use the internet probably aren't people Apple cares about. Apple has no desire to operate in the long tail. They want comfortable margins and the economies that come along with having a narrow range of physical products that can act as portals to their digital store. No doubt they'd love their products in the hands of every person on the planet, but they aren't going to sacrifice their margins to make that happen.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
It is likely that most of the social networking stuff with apple will be tied to me.com or iTunes. Both of these are fee based services
iTunes is not fee based. Everything, including Ping is free until you download something, like a song or a game. Facebook has something to be worried about. Facebook's revenue stream is eyeballs on ads and if people spend more time in Ping, Facebook is losing.
Since Ping is free, the rest of your discussion doesn't make any sense. What Apple is doing is basically creating a social network, for free, to encourage sales of music through the iTunes store. Apple's vision for the longest time has been to continue to come up with more tools that encourage you to buy content. We used to think of the iTunes music store as a vehicle to drive hardware sales. It once was, but it's so big now in terms of volume I don't believe that any more. They are trying to get people to buy content so that they make money, pure and simple.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
And 275 billion flies can't be wrong either: eat shit.
Argumentum ad populum should never be taken as a serious argument; the chance of someone being a victim of hype and groupthink is proportional to how strongly he defends his choices.
My issue with iTunes are two things:
On the Mac, iTunes works well. Mash play/pause/FF/rewind, it does so when in the background. However, on Windows, the media keys don't work unless iTunes is present in the foreground. Even the Zune player is good in this regard.
My second issue is that iTunes is so critical to the operation of iOS devices. If iTunes becomes unusable, you can't restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch if that dies. Other iPods can be used with third party utilities, or even manually dumped in disk mode.
What I'd like to see Apple do with iTunes on both Mac and Windows is have a method of repairing the program, as well as more thorough diagnostics. Not just checking file placement and Registry/NetInfo entries, but running checks on the installed drivers, checking to see if the daemons/services start up and stay up, looking for known conflicts (say the iPod driver conflicts with another utility), and then a standalone program to temporarily disable all USB drivers, allow an iDevice to be plugged in, and check to see if that works on a low level basis.
Another thing I'd like to see is a pure image dump, similar to nandroid. This way, the iDevice can be backed up and restored without having to restore the app plists, then resync everything back. Even if this backup was locked to the device with an encryption key for the whole blob, it would be extremely nice to have. iOS devices are doing a more and more things, they really need an advanced backup system, so one can restore the device with an image if something happens. Even better would be a synthetic full method of backups, where incrementals can be taken of the device, and a full image generated from the first full + the incrementals after that. This would allow a nice point in time system.
Finally, I wish iOS devices would get a filesystem that supported snapshotting. Why? This would allow syncs over the air and allowing the user to keep using the device while it is syncing, assuming the user wasn't using an application whose files were getting a change pushed to them from the remote side of course.
Anyway "ping" already has some well established (and very specific) meaning in the computer world. I'm surprised Apple would choose that specific word for their newest gimmick. Especially since it is already loaded with such uncool, geeky history.
"Ping" has an established meaning among a very small segment of computer users. A group that is quite capable of recognizing social networking use versus networking diagnostic use. Trademarks are assigned in specific product/service classes and social networking and computer system administration are probably sufficiently distant. For example "facebook" had to be trademarked in multiple service classes: entertainment services, technological services, social services, ... FWIW "ping" is trademarked in various computer networking and service contexts and these marks are unrelated to the unix command.
Among the general population "ping" may be understood to mean getting someone's attention but if asked where the word came from you are probably more likely to get a reference to submarines and sonar than the unix utility. Wiki is merely an example of written by techies for techies, a convenient place to look up technical details. Non-technical use of "ping" does not need a reference page hence the wiki bias. Given the widely accepted definition of getting someone's attention Apple did a pretty good job at naming this feature.
You don't have to pay Apple a dime (or even a fraction of a cent) to use iTunes and/or the App Store. You pay for what you purchase; there are no subscriptions.
On the Mac, iTunes works well. Mash play/pause/FF/rewind, it does so when in the background. However, on Windows, the media keys don't work unless iTunes is present in the foreground. Even the Zune player is good in this regard.
Easily fixable with a quick download.
I am currently trying the get a Linux based HTPC/Media box set up. The largest PiTA has been trying to get a decent music player. They all either lack things that I consider basic features, can't handle a decent sized media library, are slow/laggy/unstable, or are so arcane that my random non-geek friends will never be able to use it at parties. Songbird was my first choice, but its dead, and for some reason completely unstable (trying to get the .deb version I found to play nicely with last.fm is impossible). If there was a way to get Rhythmbox (which is the only one I would consider remotely stable) to do the party-shuffle/itunes DJ thing I would be happy. Or if there was a way to get Banshee to stop hanging every 10 minutes. Or if Listen made the slightest bit of sense. Or if... you get the point.
iTunes is very, very bad. But, sadly, it is the best thing out there.
iTunes 10 is ridiculous... its sitting at 157mb right now, which is around 200% higher than any other process.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey