Christopher Breen reports for Macworld UK, “In his recent appearance at the All Things Digital conference, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, had this to say about the company’s music-centric social networking service, Ping: ‘We tried Ping and the customer voted and said, this isn’t something I want to put a lot of energy into. Some customers love it, but there’s not a huge number that do, so will we kill it? I don’t know. I’ll look at it.'”
“Given that this is the kind of lukewarm endorsement generally reserved for a hospitable but unwelcome plague of roof rats, we can safely assume that when Tim and crew find the time, in come the exterminators and out goes Ping,” Breen writes. “While I could let Ping go quietly into the night, Apple provides us with so few failures that it’s impossible to pass up the opportunity to give Ping’s corpse a poke or two to determine what led to its demise. And, fortunately, it doesn’t take a forensic genius to sleuth that out. Let the list begin.”
Read more in the full article here.
I contend that with better new music ping would have been more successful. It’s goal was to allow users to ‘discover and share new music’- well, there isn’t any substantial music being released right now to do that with. I don’t need to share my 30 year old Bob Dylan picks, I don’t want to receive lady gaga recommendations.
Dub-step is what all the kids are into nowadays- not actual music at all, just beeps and boops and bass.
You are wrong, Jim Morrison predicted EDM years and years ago. I would certainly consider it Music. Good or bad music? Now that is the question you are attempting to answer. I leave that to the subjective opinion of the listener.
Who are these minority of people using Ping? Seems incredulous that Apple would continue to update and improve Ping if it hasn’t captured the interest of users.
It sucked. End of story.
Ping: “You’re about to be absorbed into a new universe of making connections accepting connections, denying connections, ignoring invitations, learning new interfaces, being asked to authorize stuff and wondering about privacy and who is thinking what about you because you once enjoyed and chose a Selena Gomez album… CANCEL OR ALLOW?”
Ta Dah!!!!!!!!!! +1,000,000 Everybody screws up. Even Apple. Thank You. Nuff said.
Kill it dead, and finally allow the merging and separating of accounts. All the iTunes kids are getting married and it would make things similar to have accounts with sub accounts.
It’s pretty simple. Sean Parker killed Ping because he wanted Spotify to take off.
“Hey Mark, don’t do the Ping thing… Let’s make Spotify the defacto music sharing app… ”
Okay. Deal’s off. Ping is aborted.
Apple should hire Billy of Vexcon fame to exterminate all the useless crap in Lion, and soon, Mountain Lion.
I started to sign up for Ping, but was startled to learn that it required using my real name, as given on my Apple account credit card and that it would retroactively convert all my prior reviews to my real name. What’s the point of forcing that kind of inflexibility?
Didn’t know that (never bothered with Ping), good point.
This even more stupid than Google forcing real names on Google Plus–more because on G+ you could still get away with an alias that’s plausibly real, with Ping it’s pulled straight from your credit card–your actual, legal name.
Good article, seemed well thought out and made valid unbiased points.
I used Ping because I’m a musician and I wanted to support a social network dedicated to music.
Many other famous musicians also got on the Ping bandwagon when it was released.
If Ping failed it’s because Apple let it.
do we really need ANOTHER f***ing stupid social network in our lives. I don’t! I have enough with Facebook following me all day everwhere… I get sick when I see every morning the icon “like it” popping up just before I flush the toilette…
People… what’s happening? Wake up and see around you!
Ping would have been much more useful if it was more automated. If I have already rated songs as 5 stars, why should I have to tell ping that i “like” them? Isn’t it already obvious that I do? Also, why make me “like” songs one at a time? Ping has no ability to “like” a whole group of songs at once. Hey, Ping, here’s a clue: If I rated it 4 stars, I “like” it; if I rated it 5 stars, I”love” it.
Duh
Ping was an unmitigated disaster because it was tied down to the terrible MobileMe services.
Ping is not a good sound to hear.
Tired of social-this and social-that functions and sites.
When they required me to sign up just to rate music and movies at iTunes, I knew there was a problem with their approach.
Apple is smart enough to do a Facebook that’s better than they are, but they shouldn’t “socialize” stuff just to appear trendy.