Ping was scheduled for unceremonious termination at the end of September, and now it’s definitely gone dark. Clicking on the Ping link in the iTunes sidebar now returns an error, if it even still appears there. Our own Josh Constine foretold its demise back in September, and now it’s gone, both on mobile and the desktop. → Read More
Update: iTunes is getting more social, but not with Ping. Today Apple announced that Ping will be shut down on September 30th. iTunes 11 will instead display your Facebook friends who Liked each entry, offer Facebook and Twitter sharing for purchases, plus let musicians share photos on their artist pages. The changes come amongst a larger overhaul to the iTunes store and player… → Read More
Before we start getting even deeper into our analyses of which startups and products Apple killed today with its iOS 6 and other announcements, we should all remember that it basically tried to build Spotify with social music network Ping, and well, look how that turned out. → Read More
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 … → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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.… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More
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