I have no problem with a business making money. I like Apple products. I just do not care for Apple as a company. I have a problem with their ethics. I won't go into it because it's off topic.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Confusion Over Facebook's Brief Appearance in Ping for iTunes
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I have no problem with a business making money. I like Apple products. I just do not care for Apple as a company. I have a problem with their ethics. I won't go into it because it's off topic.
"Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to."
From what I've heard from others in negotiations with Facebook management, that sounds about right.
From what I've heard from others in negotiations with Facebook management, that sounds about right.
Apple has to start somewhere, PING is a good starting point. Too bad the name is already associated with golf.
When I signed up last night I used that Facebook Connect button and it did find a few of my friends... shame it's gone now, especially with everyone and their mother being on FB.
I'm sure they are, the only thing is that on this issue and others, Facebook is incredibly unstable.
They simply grew too big too fast without thinking of their user's safety or preferences.
Well I haven't found any musicians that I like to add. Ping has set sail for fail in my book. What a terrible launch.
Exactly. I've wasted enough time sorting/adding/customizing Facebook and Twitter with contacts and preferences. If I could have it point to them and be done with it great but I'm not starting over again with Ping sorry.
It needs to launch before artists join.
My guess is apple with throw in some sort of incentive when making contracts with artists if they agree to use ping.
Funny. When I hear "ping" i think the unix command for testing network connectivity.
There is a thread over at the Apple discussions on this that I have been following. Interestingly, there was mention of this and that post has been removed. The terms there do not allow for discussion about Apple's course of action but they seem to allow for second guessing Facebook's actions. Either way nobody there can answer why or how the Facebook feature existed, is mentioned, or the way it is supposed to work.
It needs to launch before artists join.
My guess is apple with throw in some sort of incentive when making contracts with artists if they agree to use ping.
a lot of the content on ping is from LiveNation so my guess is that the artists on Ping have some kind of business with LiveNation
I have an account on GoodReads because I read books, and I have a couple friends on there via some web forums. But it's been insanely difficult to get any real-life friends, even those who read regularly, to sign up on the website. It's a straightforward site, adding your books is easy, and you can rate and comment on what your friends are doing, so it's not because it's complex. As far as I can tell it's because it means you have to go to a website and tell it what you're doing.
Ping has an advantage in that iTunes keeps track of that stuff for you, to some degree, but it's so focused that there's a similar hurdle. People like Facebook because you can post about your dog or kid, or you can post about a political topic or a cool new thing you learned. You can add links and pictures, which is what most people want to see from their friends.
Ping requires me to load it up, arguably when I'm in the mood to find new music. There's nothing in there for just keeping up with friends -- I would need to be intentionally curious about what my friends are listening to (which seems like it would only apply when I first ask them to be friends) or when I'm intentionally shopping for new music (which is Apple's intent).
The thing that I think upsets me about Ping is that it seems like it's Apple's band-aid to the otherwise terrible shopping interface for the iTMS. Since you can't sort easily, can't search easily, are sandboxed so you can't use Google or open tabs, can't see good recommendations or non-MP3 releases, they figure that rather than changing that (by, say, making a web store), they add a layer of "social networking" on top to help people find music. How about fixing the interface so I can find music without relying on my friends?
One thing that makes me really curious about Ping is how well it will work with non-iTMS music. If I buy music from Amazon -- that may have slightly different song-lengths, song titles, or genre classification -- will iTunes recognize it for Ping? Genius doesn't currently, especially if I correct the ID3 tags (such as removing "Feat. [name]" from the Artist tag), which makes me think Ping won't either. The more I think about it, the more Ping strikes me as something they thought up when they realized that Genius sort of sucks.