What Ping Needs To Do To Be Relevant

Let’s face it – Apple does a lot of things right, but social networking is not one of them. They’re always late to the game when it comes to having a presence on popular social sites, and with the exception of their iTunes Facebook fan page, they’re really doing a crappy job in the space.

Apple launched their own music social service called Ping a few months back alongside the release of iTunes 10. If you haven’t tried Ping, think of it as Twitter for musicians, only not useful, anti-social and pretty pathetic.

I gave Apple the benefit of the doubt when Ping first launched and didn’t pile up on them when they were being hammered with all the (justifiable) complaints. As is the case with any new social site, it takes time for the content to populate and for users to find value. Fast forward to the beginning of December and with a few small exceptions, Ping is still a joke of a service that really serves no unique purpose.

First off, getting a profile on Ping as a musician is a tedious process. Artist profiles must be set up through Apple, and artists are basically given a rule book on what they can and can’t do on the service. This is the reason the initial run of artists at launch was so small. Ping is adding more and more artists every day, but there are still many notable exceptions still nowhere to be found. Apple also has a section of “high profile” people it suggests you follow. As someone that prides myself on my immense music knowledge and excellent taste, there was not one “tastemaker” that I felt was worth following.

Content aside, there are so many things that Ping doesn’t do which show that Apple is not using it as a true “social” tool as much as they are using it as a way to sell music. There’s no way to “scrobble” your songs like Last.FM does, to keep a running tally of what you listen to and use that data to crowd-source artist and song popularity. Ping only displays recommendations built upon your iTunes purchasing history. You know, because everyone buys all their music from iTunes.

When Ping first launched, you could connect with your friends via Facebook Connect for about 12 hours before the feature was pulled to never be replaced again. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that Ping finally integrated with Twitter to push out your activity. While it’s nice to have some Twitter integration, the real value is in Facebook where people tend to be much more closely connected in real life with their network.

There’s also no public API, so the only way to access Ping is via iTunes (desktop or mobile). While this isn’t a huge problem on the iPhone, it’s really inconvenient to have to open up iTunes just to check Ping. Would it have killed Apple to make this a web service too? The rich developer network utilizing the Twitter API is what helped propel that company into the mainstream that to launch any social network without a public API today is just foolish.

I’ll honestly be surprised if Ping is around two years from now. Nothing from what I’ve seen thus far shows me that there’s any interest by users, nor does Apple seem to be doing much to make this a service that people need to use. Until Apple takes a page out of Last.FM’s book and truly mixes social and music, it will just be another laughable, failed attempt at tapping into the ever-growing world of social networking.

In case you’re interested, you can follow me on Ping – while it’s still around.