So it turns out that almost nobody wants people to check out their purchases. And also that just adding a social element to a feature isn’t enough to make it useful. The lessons of user adoption are sometimes learned the hard way.
Thus is the story of the failure of Blippy, a product that launched in private beta in December of 2009 and that we breathlessly fawned over again, and again, and again and again (and again and again …). → Read More
When Ping launched in early September, the music social network had one major problem: it wasn’t social. Sure, you can share stuff inside of iTunes, but there was no good way to post the songs you liked to the two big social networks: Facebook and Twitter. The truth is that Ping launched with Facebook Connect integration, but it was only for contacts, and then Apple and Facebook had a bit of a dust up. Today, Apple is bringing Twitter integration to Ping.
As Twitter has just announced on their blog, by connecting iTunes to Twitter, you’ll be able to not only find your Twitter friends on Ping, but you’ll be able to tweet out Ping activity as well. That last bit is a key to making Ping actually work. → Read More
Much has been said about Apple’s foray into “social networking” (at least into what they consider that term to entail) with the introduction of Ping, part of the company’s iTunes software.
Some are positive about its chances, saying it is merely the seed of amazing things to come, others much less so.
I concur with the latter group and deem the product to be horse dung, 160 million potential users be damned. → Read More
If the new Ping sidebar that was launched today as a part of iTunes 10.0.1 looks familiar, perhaps it’s because you’ve been using the iLike Sidebar — an iTunes (and Windows Media Player) plug-in that does pretty much the same thing. We know at least one person finds the two very similar: Ali Partovi, the co-founder of iLike.
“I just hope Apple also copies iLike’s mission of democratizing music by empowering artists, especially the little guys. With Ping’s restrictions so far on artist signup, the major labels are the winners, not artists, and that breaks my heart,” Partovi told us today when asked about Ping’s newest feature. → Read More
It launched with much fanfare, but I don’t think it was unreasonable to call Ping a dud out of the gate. While pretty much everyone initially signed up to try it out, a few days later, the activity stream seemed to trickle to almost nothing. And there was a good reason for that: Apple’s social network for music made it very hard to share stuff — you know, be social. But an update today makes it at least a thousand times better.
iTunes 10.0.1 released this morning brings some big Ping updates with it. Most notably, you can now use Ping with your own iTunes library. Previously, you could only share songs on Ping through the iTunes Store — a big difference. This basically meant that even if you already owned a song, you had to hunt it down in the iTunes Store to share it. This was almost laughably tedious, and it ensured that no one would use Ping for more than a couple days. → Read More
It could be said that ‘social’ is no longer a product, it’s a feature. Just witness Apple flicking the social networking switch on its hugely popular iTunes. And today the music video streaming startup Muzu.TV is doing the same.
“These days music sites need to do more than just provide users with content”, says Mark French, co-founder of Muzu. “Our visitors are part of the social networking generation and they’re looking for a site that puts them in touch not only with bands and fellow fans but also keeps them updated on the music scene.”
Ah, the social networking generation, a phrase often used to explain another me-too offering. In this case, while Muzu has a particular focus on music videos, it’s still pitching itself as the “the ultimate destination for music fans”, going up against the likes of MySpace, Apple’s Ping, and a host of other music-related social offerings, such as mFow. → Read More
Over the weekend Philip Kaplan, co-founder of social purchasing site Blippy tweeted out a link to Steve Jobs demoing iTunes Ping, with the added sly comment “Looks like Blippy.” Curious about what Jobs’ movement into the social sharing space means for Blippy, we brought Kaplan into the TCTV studio and grilled him on what exactly Jobs did or did not copy, how often iTunes purchases were shared on Blippy, and whether or not the concept of social shopping has hit mainstream. → Read More
From the very same Internet that brought you The Twitter Movie, The YouTube Movie, The Auction Site Movie and The Other Social Network Movie comes today’s Ping parody: Another Social Network Movie. Something tells me that people are just going to keep making these parodies of David Fincher’s The Social Network until they run out of websites. Can’t wait to see what people come up with for Orkut.
While this trailer primarily focuses on the travails of the Ping user interface, you can help but sympathize as the beleaguered user checks for iTunes updates, dramatically agrees to the 36 page terms of service, restarts their computer, gets their login denied, tries to upload a photo, ends up following Keith Urban, etc … → Read More
What do you get when you connect your customers to each other? If the customers like your product (and I’d say 10 billions songs sold shows definite positive bias) you get more sales. This echo chamber is what everyone – from Facebook on down – is trying to create and while I don’t believe Apple will pull it off, I think Ping is the first step in the right direction for online sales. First, take a gander at what El Gruber has to say about Ping. He notes: “One way or another, though, if Ping proves popular, it shouldn’t remain focused solely on music.” He comes at the Ping question from a usability standpoint – shouldn’t there be a separate Ping app? Something completely disconnected from iTunes? In this way, Apple can add books, movies, apps, and the like to Ping and separate it from the lump of code called iTunes. → Read More
Ping – ping ping ping ping – ping ping, ping? Ping! Ping, ping ping ping ping; ping-ping ping! Ping.
Ping ping ping, *ping* ping ping #ping ping. Ping, ping:
“Ping ping ping ping ping — ping ping ping (ping ping ping)”.
Ping ping ping ping. Ping. And yet and yet…
Ping?
With the launch of Ping this week in the latest update for iTunes, Apple is finally adding social elements to its software. Ping is very promising if only because of Apple’s reach through iTunes to 160 million music consumers. And it will no doubt get better over time. But at launch, it is riddled with problems which stem from the fact that Apple does not know how to create social software. It is completely out of its element, and it shows.
The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web. And Ping doesn’t communicate with any other social networks. I can’t see people’s iTunes Pings in Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else. While Ping does make iTunes itself more social, the problem is that I don’t live in iTunes. It is a store. I go in to buy stuff and get out as fast as I can. I am not sure Ping is going to make me want to hang out there more. → Read More
One of the big announcements at Apple’s event today was Ping, the music social network that Apple has baked into iTunes. But it’s not just on iTunes for the computer, it’s also a part of iTunes on the iPhone and iPod touch. This will be a part of the new iOS 4.1 release which is going out to developers right now, and should be out for consumers next week.
In the demo area after the event, Apple had a bunch of iPod touches loaded with iOS 4.1, so we got to play around with it. It’s a pretty slick experience on the device because it’s so simple. Below find some pictures of how it works. → Read More
During their event today in San Francisco, Apple announced iTunes 10, the latest version of their music software. But they also introduced a big new feature in the app — Ping: a social network for music.
It’s like “Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes,” Jobs says. “But it’s not Facebook, it’s not Twitter,” Jobs is quick to note — “it’s a social network all about music.” And guess what? It has 160 million users in 23 countries built in right away (Apple will presumably be opening it up to other iTunes users later). And it’s available on your iPhone and iPod touch — right in the iTunes Store. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
