Apple launches new social network

[snowball]

What do people make of its prospects?

http://www.neowin.net/news/itunes-10-available-today-new-social-network-ping

http://www.neowin.net/news/ping-itunes-goes-social-neowin-goes-mouse-on

[b_schear]

Just by being connected with apple and such I can't imagine it will fall completly on its' face, but maybe a perputual stumble is in store.

Coming with the new update is Apple's new social network, Ping. Ping is designed to help users find new music, concerts, and connect with friends. This will work much like a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter. You will be able to follow your friends and artists, and they will be able to post images, videos, posts, and show recent activity. Naturally, you will have to setup up a profile associated with your iTunes account to use this feature.

It just doesn't seem to be offering anything that isn't out there already.

A question connected deeply with snowballs' orginal is, "How many social networking "tools" (facebook, twitter, etc) are too much?  Can there be enough?  Is the social networking sphere already saturated?

[bennycompton]

It might be trying to take over the space colonised by the undead kingdom of MySpace. If it allows people to upload their own music to their pages, and to use these in nice social networking ways, then it might be reasonably successful. Although the iTunes thing is a barrier. :/

[ronan]

As I understand it, it's going to be an application built into ITunes which tracks what you're listening to and automatically shows you what all your friends are listening to. Every time somebody mentions a particular song or band, there will be a "buy" link. So if your friend writes: "just listening to Bonnie "Prince" Billy's new album, it's really starting to grow on me..." there will be a link to purchase the album (motivation + opportunity + trigger = sales). It sounds very clever to me. And if it's integrated into I Tunes, an application which millions of people already use, it'll be very successful. Unlike Facebook or Twitter or whatever, it has a very clear business plan - it doesn't need 500 million members to make money from advertising, it only needs to increase the amount of music people buy. Which it will do.

[milgram]

Yeah what you said. Scrobbling + payment links. Looks like last.fm are in trouble.

Though they were bought by CBS a couple years ago, so maybe it's more like the new shape of the record industry forming. Do MySpace / NewsInternational have a record company yet?

[888]

iTunes is so shit it sends me into a frothing rage everytime I'm forced to use it. And only idiots buy music online so this site is doomed to a niche market of fuckwits.

[milgram]

I don't think "fuckwits" are a niche market for music unfortunately 

[snowball]

And only idiots buy music online so this site is doomed to a niche market of fuckwits.

I dont think you have to be an idiot, lots of people don't know how to use file sharing sites, or may judge the risks of file sharing differently to you, I don't think this makes them idiots.

That said I'm not fan of the itunes user interface, but its install base is massive (everyone who owns an ipod + everyone who bought one of the 10 billion songs sold on the store) and its competition consists of Windows Media Player, so it doesn't really need to have a nice interface.