Hi all,
I have just finished providing feedback to Apple on iTunes 10, in particular Ping.
Now before you all start flaming me with comments about "why do we care what you think" there is reason why I'm posting about it here. The new iPod shuffle indicates beyond a doubt that Apple does listen to feedback, and where it makes sense they change accordingly. Now the only problem with feedback on it's own is that only Apple sees it and many people simply won't bother to do the same so I figured I would put down the things I wrote about here in the hope of generating discussion on these points which is a form of public feedback.
The Primary Ping Problem
Ping in it's current form is not a "Social network about music discovery" it is an incestuous iTunes marketing tool where it's customers sell it's products to each other.
Using social networking as a marketing tool is not new, duh, and when done right is actually a mutually beneficial arrangement between companies and their customers as it is an extension of the kind of targeted advertising pioneered by the like of Google Ads combined with the viral advertising concept.
The problem with Ping is that it is not mutually beneficial at this point as it only allows you to express your opinion about iTunes products and not music in general. iTunes does not cover the entire world of music, in fact it covers only a very small portion of it.
If Ping were mutually beneficial then I could select any music from my library as items I like for others to see and where it was matched to something in the iTunes library then the existing preview/purchase integration could come in to play. Where my selections refer to items not currently in the iTunes store then Ping could allow others to indicate their interest in seeing this album/artist in the store. See? Mutually beneficial as Apple can use the data collected to streamline their acquisition process and we the consumers are more likely to see what we want to consume show up.
It should be noted that all the information needed to do what I have outlined above is already there in the meta data attached to your music.
...
Now to something of a little more like personal concern: I was surprised by the ridiculously small selection of genres available to choose from...no Electronic? WTF? What? I can't say that I like K-Pop?
I have just finished providing feedback to Apple on iTunes 10, in particular Ping.
Now before you all start flaming me with comments about "why do we care what you think" there is reason why I'm posting about it here. The new iPod shuffle indicates beyond a doubt that Apple does listen to feedback, and where it makes sense they change accordingly. Now the only problem with feedback on it's own is that only Apple sees it and many people simply won't bother to do the same so I figured I would put down the things I wrote about here in the hope of generating discussion on these points which is a form of public feedback.
The Primary Ping Problem
Ping in it's current form is not a "Social network about music discovery" it is an incestuous iTunes marketing tool where it's customers sell it's products to each other.
Using social networking as a marketing tool is not new, duh, and when done right is actually a mutually beneficial arrangement between companies and their customers as it is an extension of the kind of targeted advertising pioneered by the like of Google Ads combined with the viral advertising concept.
The problem with Ping is that it is not mutually beneficial at this point as it only allows you to express your opinion about iTunes products and not music in general. iTunes does not cover the entire world of music, in fact it covers only a very small portion of it.
If Ping were mutually beneficial then I could select any music from my library as items I like for others to see and where it was matched to something in the iTunes library then the existing preview/purchase integration could come in to play. Where my selections refer to items not currently in the iTunes store then Ping could allow others to indicate their interest in seeing this album/artist in the store. See? Mutually beneficial as Apple can use the data collected to streamline their acquisition process and we the consumers are more likely to see what we want to consume show up.
It should be noted that all the information needed to do what I have outlined above is already there in the meta data attached to your music.
...
Now to something of a little more like personal concern: I was surprised by the ridiculously small selection of genres available to choose from...no Electronic? WTF? What? I can't say that I like K-Pop?
