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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...
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.)
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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.
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.
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.
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"
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.