Ping Reaches One Million Members ... But Not Without a Few Problems

Ping, the musical network service that Apple is hoping will bring a social dimension to its iTunes platform gained a million registered users in its first two days.  The software itself currently has 160 million users.  At the same time, the platform, which according to Steve Jobs, is a ''mix between Facebook and Twitter'' has begun to attract its first critics.


According to Cupertino, Ping is designed to help users discover new artists, keep up to date with their favourite stars and 'network' their musical tastes with their friends.  Each user creates their own profile which can be followed by others, and, they can, of course, choose to follow others and add their own comments.  In short, Ping works just like other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.  Add a dash of MySpace and a touch of LastFM, and you have the recipe for Apple's shiny new service, which will no doubt gradually be expanded to cover films, TV series and books in due course.

We like it ... but not just yet

To join the new network, which is entirely separate from the rest of the web as it's built directly into iTunes, you need to download the new version, iTunes 10.  Even that takes a little bit of time ...

Once you've updated the software, all you need to do is open the Ping tab, sign into your iTunes account and create your Ping profile, starting with your three favourite musical genres, suggesting Apple doesn't imagine its users will have particularly eclectic tastes.  You can then select some profiles to follow.  We imagine that the list, which is currently limited to artists like U2 and Lady Gaga, will eventually grow to include up and coming new artists.

Hard work

As for your personal contacts, creating your friend list isn't very easy.  There's no way to import your contacts from Twitter or Facebook into Ping.  The latter was available on day one, but has since been frozen because Apple can't reach an agreement with the site over how  much to pay for this access.  Instead, you need to search for people one by one, hoping, of course, that they've already signed up.  When we tried it, nine out of ten attempts resulted in the chance to 'send an invitation' to somebody to try the service ...

But let's give it some time: Ping is a brand new service.  While you're waiting for more of your friends to come and play, you can follow (or not) the profiles of some of the big stars that are already part of the service.  Their pages, should, according to Apple grow to include video, and lots of them are DJs rather than singers or bands, with the idea being that they can help you to dig out some new discoveries.

For the time being, we can't help but conclude that Apple's new social network reeks of an advertising opportunity rather than a spontaneous community.  The major labels are no doubt delighted to have a new way to target potential customers, and lead them, of course, right through to the iTunes music store.  You're never far away, because every time you add a new artist, you have to look them up in the Store itself.  You don't have to be too much of a cynic to realise that one of Ping's aims is to encourage users to buy more music.

The economic model is crystal clear: my friends like this music, so I'll listen to it.  I like it too, so I'll buy it.  That's how it's supposed to work, anyway.  The opportunities to make money are self-evident: 160 million iTunes accounts means 160 million credit cards waiting to buy more music.  That said, just having a big user base is no guarantee of success for Ping.

Teething problems

Right now, the network is cruelly lacking in flexibility, and is, of course, very immature.  If you think about the attraction of this kind of musical social network (which LastFM has already demonstrated very well), and consider this new step another part of Apple's strategy, then it's going to have to change a lot to keep up with Steve Jobs' ambitious plans.

The potential is there, as long as interaction between users, one of the basic requirements of any social network, is genuine, and part of a series of open exchanges, rather than a closed system.  Right now, for instance, you can't share content from Ping on another network like you can with Twitter and Facebook.

We have a hard time seeing how Ping will get out of the walled garden created by iTunes without more open access to other tools, especially now that cloud-based music apps like Spotify are growing in popularity precisely because they are entirely integrated with existing social networks.  If Apple won't go that far, we'd still like to see it add streaming, so we can discover new artists that aren't yet signed to a label, for instance, or listen to all of a track recommended by a friend, rather than the thirty-second sample available before purchase.

In short, we'd like to see Ping, which has been presented as an improved version of Facebook (where sharing music is already very easy) or Twitter, offer users at least as much as these two services, if not more.  A million members is one thing, and no doubt curiosity will incite others to join in the coming weeks and months.  But a real, active community is much better.

Finally, one last thing: if Apple is going to rely on an entirely closed system, does that mean it's going to get rid of spam on its own social network?


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