Apple’s Ping is more hype than substance
When Apple announced its new Ping service on Wednesday, I was ecstatic. Most people use Myspace to find and share music, but I didn’t like Myspace at all. In fact I don’t even have a Myspace account. Integrating iTunes with a music-based social media network felt like two things that went well together – like chocolate and peanut butter.
iTunes 10 dropped for us around 10pm on Wednesday night. I quickly downloaded it, set up my Ping account, and was completely underwhelmed. At first it just gave me a list of artists to follow. I followed Lady Gaga, and that was about it for me. What I was expecting was a service similar to last.fm where the songs you’re currently listening to are listed in your friends’ feed. Although this feature wasn’t stated during Steve’s keynote, it just seemed like a logical extension of an iTunes-based social network.
There needs to be an option to not list these people
Ping gives you a list of genres to pick from, but you can only select three. I found this to be extremely limiting since I listen to a wide range of music types. I had to settle for the three I listen to the most, but would have liked five, or more.
I tried liking albums in my library, but I found that you can’t do that from your library. Despite what Apple claims about this being a social network, it’s more than that – it’s more about turning its users into promotional tools, and they prove that by forcing you to like items that are only in the iTunes Store. That means I can’t like anything by AC/DC, nor can I like “The Wall” since it’s not in the iTunes Store.
Liking albums and songs aren’t very well thought out either. In order to like an album or song, you need to go to it in the iTunes Store, and then click on the little triangle next to the price. There you’ll find the “Like” item. The same goes for songs, just click on the triangle next to the price for the same menu.
Pro tip: If you want to Like albums by a specific artist, search for that artist and click on “Show All”. There, you’ll see all the albums by that artist, and it’ll be much easier to click on the triangles of the albums you want to like.
Once I liked a bunch of albums, I took a look at my own feed. It was nothing but a list of individual “likes” for each album. I was hoping to maybe see them bunched up, but I think Apple set it up that way so you can post comments on each one. The problem is that it looks spammy, and if you like more than ten albums, the list starts to fall off since it only shows you ten per page. I would like to have a section for each artist or genre I like. There, people can see all the Rush or Nine Inch Nails or Iron Maiden albums I like.
I remember seeing that Ping allows you to see what concerts your friends are going to. I clicked on “Concerts” in the Rush section above and the show I’m going to tonight was listed. You can click on a button called “I’m going!” and the concert will be listed on your profile.
After Krissi and I tested the system out for about an hour, I was very unimpressed. This is supposed to be a music-based social network! I want to know what people are listening to, what their favorite albums are, what praises they’ve sung for specific songs, and have it all grouped by genre or artist. I’d also like a list of matching favorites; I may not know that someone listens to NIN also. Friends should also feature albums to their friends with a post saying “this is why I think this album is freakin’ awesome!”. You can add a post to an album, but once that liked album falls off the current list, friends won’t see it unless they find it on the page it’s on. I’d also like Apple to allow us to list albums that aren’t on the iTunes store. Not only does that limit what I can post, but it makes the service as a whole seem a little disingenuous since I feel they only made this to sell music, and not because they love music as they claim.
I’ll continue to use Ping, but I’m not as excited about it now as I was two days ago. Apple should listen to its userbase now that they’re in this space and build the network to something that we’d all expect from Apple.
Category: How-Tos, Social Media, Technology
