Maybe they should do something like Spotify, when you're listening to a song it shows up in the sidebar ticker thing...then people could click it to preview the song and maybe buy it.
And when you buy an album it shows up on your timeline etc.
Nope that was all part of Ping. It was part of why they wanted to do it, to hopefully generate more sales.
Ping could be useful of they were to put some effort into it. And open it up for more than the big name folks. But if they aren't willing to put in some effort then yes they should stop pretending.
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Actually there are some folks that would love it if you could create your own homepage online (say with your iCloud account) that would have your game center stats, ping comments/itunes reviews, your Journals and when it happens your public streams all in one big home page. Perhaps even widgets for showing your Facebook/Twitter updates.
Not a network but still social.
i must have been one of the few who checked out ping quite often. Some of my friends are on it and when i see they have bought a song or album, or if i have, we usually talk about it.
Ping could have been a lot more if apple bothered to put some effort into it. It could have been used as a review site for everything in the store, not just music. So apple couldn't get together with facebook on this, but it did have twitter on board, but so what? Anything i did on ping didn't show up on twitter. Ping is a very isolated social network so the likelyhood of people wanting to use it, as well as twitter and facebook, weren't going to be high as it wouldn't interact with other social networks.
I think Ping's short life span could have been predicted at launch!
It was a half arsed effort just to have some social functionality in iTunes ( I believe it was launched after Apple and Facebook couldn't agree terms ).
I wouldn't mind Last.fm integration, though!
It's good to know that Apple can try new things, make mistakes and still be around tomorrow.
Some people are lambasting the service in an "AppleHipster saiz ware iz yur god naw, AppleFanbois?" kind of way, but I see it as an Apple strength. Why not give it a crack? It might catch on. If it doesn't, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try something else.
I'm glad that they're big enough now that some of these ideas that they might not otherwise have tried get to see daylight and have their turn. And that they're savvy enough to know when to cut their losses.
I remember when I tried Ping briefly a few months ago. As a fan of heavy music, I was disgusted to find Justin Bieber and Katy Perry in the "Artists we recommend you follow".
It was very much a "Piss off, Ping" moment from then.
My suggestion is throw away Ping and add FLAC!