September 7th, 2010
Yet again, Apple has attempted a change in telecommunications; as a new generation of Apple products (iPod Touch, Shuffle, and Nano) has inspired another iTunes update, now including a social networking service called Ping. The digital music distribution powerhouse has currently produced less than satisfactory results from its "first attempt at social networking" for a number of reasons: mainly, its formatting and lack of content. Although I do not believe our industry should currently invest in it, I predict that Ping will become very popular in the near future. I will address the problems that are presently faced with Ping and resolve the issues surrounding it.
Formatting: The article characterized Ping as "a bit socially awkward, especially for people who are used to Facebook" and for good reason: Facebook has rejected mutual interactivity with Ping. This will prove to be the greatest challenge against Ping - iTunes consumers are not ready to disband from the leader in social networking, and iTunes is not contributing something groundbreaking to the market in friend-to-friend communication. With this rises another problem - Ping cannot import one's friends from any social networking site. There is hope in Ping, though - it uses the Twitter format of following artists on iTunes and an apple spokesperson said that the company is attempting to settle a partnership with Facebook. Expect rumors of a partnership deal to appear in the next six months.
Content: As I have said before, "starting from scratch" with one's friend list leaves an unorganized and "empty" list of users. The article also says that Ping only uses the first names of users, making it more difficult to find your friends with common names. The bigger problem - as of this writing, there are only 54 artists that signed on with Ping. I understand that Apple wants to revolutionize all of its products, and it seemed like the right move, but they should have invested more on artist approval with Ping. Time will bring more artists to Ping, and after more iTunes updates, more people will follow these artists.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704358904575477761760540990.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RIGHTTopCarousel_1#
This article is very interesting. It seems like apple needs to be ahead of the game in everything and now its going after facebook and myspace. On a more suttle note, do you think theres a little more behind the name "ping"? Its very similar to the new search engine "bing"...
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting post. I believe Apple wants to be ahead of every other corporation and is just trying to incorporate them in every possible way to attain the public’s attention. Even though “Ping” mediates an interest towards a social network it also emphasizes in music. Considering not too many artists are involved in such thing, people might reject their interest towards “Ping” at this point. However I believe it is a great move from the Apple Corporation because as time goes by the public is going to gain desire to explore all it offers. Even though “Facebook” leads the social network trend, it wouldn’t surprise me “Ping” will improve a great deal in not so much time and then surpass this other network.
ReplyDeleteNice posting, Sev; your writing is clear and I can tell what your thoughts are on the information presented in the article. Keep in mind that you don't need to title "formatting" and "content"--I can tell what you're covering in each paragraph just fine.
ReplyDeleteSo what do you all think of Ping? Would you actually want to use it? Would it replace Facebook or Myspace in any particular way, or would it remain a niche-type site?