iTunes 10, Ping, and You

Apple has just released a new version of iTunes and along with it a social network element called Ping. The new version of iTunes contains many design changes. One of the first things that I noticed was that if you had fewer than 5 songs on an album that it would not show the album artwork to the left as usual. As an album art lover this bothered me.

This is easily fixable though by going to View and selecting Always Show Artwork.

That is my only problem so far. Other than that, there are design changes that I will just have to get used to.

So what about Ping? Why should you care? Well that's what I'm here to tell you.

My first critique would have to be the name. First of all there is a third-party site named Ping.fm that allows you to keep track of all your social networks and to update all of them at once. Secondly it's a very unoriginal name. Apple is supposed to be the on the cutting edge of every industry they dip their hands into and the top minds at Apple came up with Ping. I had a similar reaction when Microsoft released it's own search engine Bing. I suppose what both companies were going for was a name that was simple and popped out of your mouth. But instead it's kind of annoying and a little embarrassing to say.

Ping allows you to follow your favorite artists and friends with the goal of seeing what they are listening to and downloading. Basically Ping allows you to see what your friends have been up to on iTunes in a social network format. If they review an album or buy a song it is shown in there recent activity. From there you can read their review, listen to a preview of the song they bought or download the song that they just bought. You can also comment and like recent activity similar to Facebook.

Normally I would tell what I like about Ping but unfortunately there is no feature that makes me love it. Instead I will just point out its flaws.

First of all there is a lack of artists to follow. Of course as time goes on there will be more so this isn't a huge problem. But it's kind of an oversight by Apple. If they wanted Ping to be a smash hit they should have contacted as many artists as possible of all different genres and gotten them to create Ping accounts. The artists are the big draw to Ping. Ping is supposed to allow you to get the latest news from your favorite artists and download their music all in one place. There are already social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter that allow you to keep up with your favorite artists and since not that many artists are on Ping yet, those sites are the obvious choice on where to go to get your updates.

Speaking of updates there are no status updates on Ping. Artists can update but the users cannot. Instead Ping will tell your followers what you have downloaded and reviewed and any other recent activity. Followers can then comment on the activity. Clearly Ping is meant for music purposes only, which may actually hinder its popularity. In my opinion if Ping were to implement the normal social network standards such as status updates then there would be more of a draw. You could see what your friends are listening to and what they are downloading. A lot of people download their music from filesharing sites so for those people they are not going to have a lot of activity on Ping.

If I had to choose between Facebook and Ping, I would definitely choose Facebook. Facebook provides all of the same features as Ping and so much more. You can already follow an artist's fan page and you can share your music with friends by the use of the Music tab that can be added to your profile. Using a website called iLike it shows the artists that you like and songs and videos from those artist.

I think Ping has potential and if it widens it's spectrum to more than just music then it has a chance to thrive. iTunes is a media player. If Ping shows the other forms of media a user likes such as movies, TV shows, and Podcasts, then they will provide a social network service that appeals to a larger number of people. Because as of now it's kind of bland.