Apple's Ill-Fated Social Network 'Ping' Launched 10 Years Ago Today

[macintoshmac]

As much as I like the look and feel of the OS now, both iOS and macOS, I can't help but feel that the interface gone by in both iOS and macOS had lesser cognitive load than it does now. It is palpable.

Big Sur is moving to a happy mixture of old and new, some part of the direction I like. iOS could do with a serious revamp. The wasted white space and the unnecessarily large fonts have never sat right with me till date.

 

[MacBH928]

I wonder if in 2030 we will read "Apple TV+ ill fated streaming service was launched 10 years ago today."

 

[inkswamp]

Can't remember the specifics, but it was very limited in how you could do things and just wasn't fun. Social media has to be very flexible and have some elements of fun, and Ping didn't have either. I remember thinking about a half-hour after using it for the first time that it was DOA.

 

[TheFluffyDuck]

Trouble was it mimicked what other social networks did better. If I want to follow Lady Ga Ga I'll just do it on twitter. My friends don't care what music I listen too and visa versa. Because music is a personal taste. If I did want to know I could message them on Facebook and find out.

 

[MDalprato]

Oh ... A little roll down memory lane.
Ping .. too much memories

 

[the 12th Doctor]

This reminds me of the time they tried to force a bloody terrible U2 album onto us

They didn't try. They did.

 

[drcre8tive]

Oh, the many ill-conceived and ill-fated web integration attempts by Apple.... remember e-World? Mobile Me?

 

[Johnny907]

And was instantly rejected and failed miserably. The end.

 

[90MinHotYogiDude]

As a human on this planet during this time, I would love for Apple to create a social network that embodies their culture and values, please please please please please please please and thank you for reading this.

 

[ss2cire]

I liked it, wish it would have took off, but oh well =)

 

[darkcompass]

I liked Ping, but there should have been more integration, like scrobbling (a la Last.fm), so the Ping pages would be a bit more dynamic, based on that.

 

[gridlocked]

There’s no money in it unless you sell data and directed ads.

Likely true but there are websites out there that do not track across sites and do not sell personalized data like DuckDuckGo that are making a living.

 

[dwaltwhit]

Likely true but there are websites out there that do not track across sites and do not sell personalized data like DuckDuckGo that are making a living.

Good point. I never thought to ask how duck duck go makes money so I looked it up. Here’s the link. I don’t think it would work for social media quite the same, but the brains in Cupertino could probably figure it out

 

[nickdalzell1]

They didn't try. They did.

And still are doing it. My iPod touch 6G, iPad 6G, MacBook Pro 2019, and iPhone 6S all got that annoying album downloaded, and it just respawned itself back if deleted. Music subscription or not.

 

[Piplodocus]

I wish Ping still existed, but maybe jazzed up a bit. Having music-specific "tweets" from artists I like directly in my music player and being able to follow what friends are currently listening to without everyone having to be pasting links (when they could be arsed) into the likes of Facebook just makes sense to me. I don't want my FB feed full of Apple Music/Spotify links if everyone tried to share that elsewhere, and I don't want to sift through the likes of Twitter to see what news artists I like have to say.

Still no decent standards-compliant way to view album artwork either, just a single crappy little square for it that can't even be dragged out to the size of a CD case on my screen.

Maybe now a far higher percentage of people are condensed into using streaming services rather than purchasing CDs/ripping/buying from so many sources, it would have more chance of survival?

 

[nickdalzell1]

Isn't MySpace today doing what Ping set out to do? connect you to music artists? That's essentially the point of MySpace these days (yes, it still exists)