I can't access the article right now, but my site: Like.fm basically is the same thing as Ping except it actually reports and keeps track of songs as you play them. It's also a web app and doesn't base itself around driving iTunes sales.
I was a little unnerved to see apple do practically my exact idea after 3 months of hardcore dedication to Like.fm, but it's ultimately validated my idea and glad to see Pings initial response isn't so good.
On your site, it says "takes 2 minutes" below "Free Signup". It might just be me, but I stopped for a moment to wonder why the signup would take so long. I think that bit of text might have a different impact than you intended.
I actually never timed the whole process. Filling up initial signup takes actually less than 30 seconds, and maybe 10 seconds if you use Facebook. Then there's a wizard after signup , though not technically part of the signup, that gets you setup with the clients and follow some people. I just thought 2 minutes sounded fast for the whole process.
I just signed up at your site. Initial impression: it looks good and works well, though I'm wondering if dododo's comment about competition with last.fm might be right. Can you write some more about the story behind the site? How big & who is the team, what did you build the infrastructure on, that sort of thing. Also, are you working on Android/iPhone clients?
Android iPhone clients aren't high on my list, as I'm not sure what I can do for them. They might be useful for scrobbling TV shows and Movies you watch (a future target area) or manually scrobbling tracks. Was there something you had in mind for mobile clients?
Nothing specific. Just that I've been listening to music more and more on my Nexus One lately, even when I'm sitting in front of Macbook. It just sort of subconsciously works. The default Android music player does have some annoying quirks.
I've been an AudioScrobbler user since it's inception. I stopped seriously scrobbling shortly after they (LastFM) got acquired by CBS and things went downhill for people trying to share their music for free, to users who weren't paid subscribers. I've been using SoundCloud to disseminate my music since, but I'm on the lookout for something that bridges the gaps between data mining, free distribution and social aspects of such services.
Give listeners and artists an import tool for LastFM/SoundCloud/iLike/Spotify/etc., learn from SoundCloud about player usability, and you might attract lots of users who got disenchanted with your direct competitors and predecessors.
Good luck & keep up the good work. Judging by the scripting.com review, Ping is just another top-down sales-driver. We still need somebody to do it the right way.
Importing is a great idea, but it seems Last.fm's API restricts using user data for commercial purposes. While I'm not commercial yet, I have intentions on becoming commercial. I'm not sure how well importing would work but it's definitely something I'm looking in to. I guess I could let the user somehow export their own data, if that's even possible, and import it themselves.
and you're not worried by CBS-owned last.fm or spotify? they seem very similar. what's the difference? i couldn't find anything on the page that convinced me to switch or use in addition to these.
p.s., those side-sticking things are really annoying.
Well I'm adding Last.fm support to my clients very soon. And my API (not yet released) is based on Last.fm's API. So soon you won't have to switch. You can use both!
I can't say about Spotify since I've never used it, but how strong is their social component? Can you use the service, share links, and browse profiles via a browser for Spotify? It seems Spotify is for listening to music like an iTunes replacement, where Like.fm is for analyzing and sharing what you listened to (the info). So we have different focuses.
Hey dododo can we chat more about this? My email is chris@like.fm. I'd like to find out what I can do to make you want to use Like.fm, and maybe bounce some of my planned features off you.
Ping feels like an exploratory project for Apple. Given the current status of Ping and it's design this looks more like an add-on to designed to work with Facebook and less of a standalone social network.
Apple doesn't seem comfortable letting iTunes users speak directly to each other. I get the idea that they are uncomfortable allowing anything that would require moderation happen in their walled garden. And the anarchic and freewheeling nature of a vibrant social network seems somewhat counter to Apple's culture.
The part that got my attention during the keynote was that it's supposed to cover concerts as well as recorded music and media; that's a very interesting model to build a social networking application around. It's early days yet, and if Apple can recruit enough artists that can use the channel to engage their audience, and loosens up and lets people talk to each other without requiring that every single gesture they make on Ping be tied to their actions in iTunes (i.e. let regular people post comments unadorned, or even their own music and videos) it may yet become a game changer.
It's interesting in that it's not so much a social network as "your order history online, for everyone in the world to see."
It's off-putting that bands can create content but regular users? Not so much.
It's odd that I can tell people I'm going to a Cold Play concert (somehow) but I can't post pictures from that event afterwards.
But then .. I don't expect Ping to remain in this same place for very long.
Apple has a habit of releasing simple, feature complete products at 1.0 and then only adding additional stuff later when they can guarantee a first-rate user experience (eg, the App Store, cut and paste on the iPhone, printing on the iPad, etc).
So their one-point-ohs have the pundits and tech journalists writing big "Huh? But it doesn't have ____!" articles, but then in six months or a year later ... it's a wholly different kind of experience.
One prediction nobody is talking about much: Since this is based, presumably, on Lala, I expect it to have some kind of streaming service soon.
Apple has a habit of releasing simple, feature complete products at 1.0 and then only adding additional stuff later when they can guarantee a first-rate user experience (eg, the App Store, cut and paste on the iPhone, printing on the iPad, etc).
This also has the side benefit of introducing users to these things in gradual baby steps.
I think the mistake Dave Winer makes is to consider this a replacement / direct competitor for Facebook. Apple just used the term "social network" because it's considered hot by the press.
Ping should be considered a replacement for the old paper-based music magazines: a channel from the music companies to the interested music lovers. An improvement over the old channel, as it makes it much easier for the consumers to buy new music, and much easier for the bands to provide small snippets of news, pictures etc.
That's what's known as a "high-concept pitch." It gives people a broad idea of what the thing is about and gets people excited by connecting it to something that's already well-loved, but often belies the actual details and intentions behind the thing. The bigger and more iconic the comparison, the more smoke and mirrors are likely being used.
For example, "Inception" could be pitched as "Like 'Ocean's Eleven' meets 'The Matrix'". It's not inaccurate, but all it's actually meant to convey is "It's a heist movie with trippy visuals." If you go into the theater expecting either of those movies, you're probably going to be a little bit confused.
An idea that came to my mind watching the keynote was that, by covering upcoming concerts, Ping could become a rather powerful way of not only notifying users of upcoming concerts, but also allowing them to buy tickets.
Apple would, of course, have to work out some arrangement with the ticket conglomerates; considering the potential market I cannot imagine this would be much of a barrier.
Imagine opening iTunes and being informed of the upcoming concerts in your area based on your listening preferences, or your friends' preferences, or even being notified that your friend is attending a concert and, hey, want to buy a ticket?
In my eye, a ticket buying feature like this would be the most game changing in the long run.
Right. Who on earth would seriously consider using an OS on which errors can occur? That's just ridiculous now that errors are a thing of the past on Unix!
Sorry! There was an error: There is no folder or object database named "stories.root" in the folder "C:\Program Files\OPML\Guest Databases\www\".
The error was detected by OPML Editor v0.73 in mainResponder.respond. Webmaster: . Time: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:14:45 GMT.
I think this is the fourth or fifth time I've followed a link on HN to his site and it wouldn't load. I've commented before about this and not trying to dogpile again, but this is frustrating because he usually does have something interesting to say..
Thanks for the update. I'd be curious to learn more about your setup. I guess OPML Editor is the framework generating your pages; but what's your web server, and how does OPML Editor tie into it?
The reason you got the error message from the OPML Editor is that it was running on port 80 while Apache was offline. As soon as Apache was running, it reverted to its normal non-80 port.
One awesome feature of Ping is that if you set your profile activity to be visible only to approved followers, you can't see your own activity yourself since you can't follow yourself.
"The activity in this profile is private. If you would like to see more, request to follow"
Nice.
Oh and another one, if you go to "People", you get "You are not following anyone. Connect with Facebook, search for people..." Yet there is no visible way to actually connect with Facebook. There was a button last night, it's gone today.
Also, if you want to add artists to your Ping profile, they better sell their stuff on the iTunes store, otherwise they don't show up in search results.
So far every comment I've seen on the stuff artists are posting is spam--"Get a free iPhone from..." over and over.
I understand that this is newly released software, but seriously.
This article is essentially complaining that Ping is one sided in that Bands can post pretty much whatever and all users can do is buy music.
I don't see what's wrong with that, it's the defacto way Twitter works. Fact is that beyond a small group of influencers nobody gives a crap what anyone is saying on Twitter. On Ping those people that are the influencers are going to be the bands. There was an article on here a few days ago where a guy came to the conclusion that no one was paying attention to his Twittering and it was a waste of his efforts.
Great post-- Ping really is a waste of a great idea. This should have been the death knell for last.fm by letting you connect with friends through the application you use to listen, but they didn't put in the most important feature! The entire 'like' feature lives in the store, not in the part of iTunes where you actually listen to music, which is where I would want to be able to communicate that I like something. Maybe olefoo is right, Apple just can't find any room in their 'walled garden' for user-generated content...
It's a ghost town. Obviously they're recommending all the musicians they have, because they have nothing to do with my musical interests. Same with users.
I believe there were at least thousands of users that had already enabled Ping last night. It's true that there aren't a lot of artists yet, but users are joining Ping pretty quickly. More artists will come in time, but they probably couldn't allow a ton of artists to join a secret social network that hadn't been announced yet without it leaking out.
I'm sure it'll fill out with time and probably be on par with things like last.fm but maybe in a more mainstream way.
What I'm trying to figure out is how to sign up as an artist... A 4+ week wait time registering for iTunes Connect as an independent artist seems to be the only thing I can find, which is really bad if that's the case.
Apple can't do social, nor any kind of web service? This is a blind spot for them, sure iTunes vod/commerce is a web service but as far an API or integration outside of their ownership must be impossible like a nerd attempting to dance ...
It's pretty early in the game to be declaring it "empty".
Of course there's no one there yet, it was announced yesterday. The interesting thing about tying it into likes (stars) and reviews is that these are actions a lot of people make already on iTunes store products. It seems to me that people will be able to review and rate downloaded music too. I think that very soon there will be a lot of information added to ping from normal everyday actions that itunes users make. I tried it out this morning, and the only disappointment was finding out facebook/gmail integration was not up yet.
The internet really does seem to thrive on kneejerk hyperbole.
On another forum I frequent there are some fanatics calling iTunes 10 an "abomination" because of the new logo and slightly different colours.
It sorta reminds me of that episode of the Simpson where Homer covers for Patti and Selma with the cigarettes where they work (a government building). P&S's supervisor points an accusatory finger at Homer and says "You, sir, are worse than Hitler (for smoking in a government building)."
I guess it's a lesson in keeping perspective.
But back to Ping: it's early days. That doesn't seem to stop people from calling it both a success and a dismal failure. Geez people, it's been 24 hours. Give it time. It's going to take time for people to discover it and how they want to use it as well as if and how artists want to use this new medium.
I saw a tweet (sorry, NY Times, that's what it's called--in spite of your ornithological sensibilities) of something like "@myspace wins". Bit premature don't you think? Besides, the concept of Myspace winning at, well, anything these days is quite laughable.
Even the Kin got six weeks. Let's not rush to judgment.
I was a little unnerved to see apple do practically my exact idea after 3 months of hardcore dedication to Like.fm, but it's ultimately validated my idea and glad to see Pings initial response isn't so good.