

Ping Now Works With Your Actual iTunes Library. This Is A Thousand Times Better - rblion
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/25/ping-itunes/

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jsz0
I don't think Ping is quite as stillborn as the tech media seems to think. I'm
seeing lots of bands I like with 40-50K followers already. This isn't exactly
mainstream Top 40 stuff either. If someone is taking the time to go find bands
to follow they're at least somewhat engaged in the service. For example Band
of Horses has ~316,000 followers on FaceBook -- they have ~30,000 on Ping in
less than a month. Considering FaceBook has 5x as many users as registered
iTunes users this is an impressive start.

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whopa
Couple things:

1) Ping is only available in the US, so a straight comparison of user numbers
to FB isn't necessarily valid. You have take the number of US users of both
iTunes and FB, and I don't think that breakdown is readily available.

2) Non-mainstream stuff is likely to be overrepresented in these sorts of
things, since people who are into to music are more likely to use such new
music services and are also likely to have more varied tastes.

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warwick
Ping is not US only. I have a Canadian iTunes account and had no problem
creating a ping account.

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whopa
Oops. I seem to remember reading comments from the original Ping announcement
story that it was. I stand corrected.

My point is still valid though. To do proper comparison for Band of Horses,
you have to take # of users in native English speaking markets. For FB, that
is not the majority, though it is a large plurality; for iTunes, it may very
well be the majority. Apple products aren't a significant part of the market
in SE Asia, but FB is.

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sprout
Maybe this was intentional? If Apple had opened with a functional last.fm
competitor, the discussion would have been about all the privacy concerns and
_do I really want to share every song I listen to with the world?_

This way the focus is on, _look Apple fixed their mistake and it actually
serves a purpose now._

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ugh
Ping doesn’t actually publish any kind of information about your listening
habits like last.fm does. All you can do is like music or comment on music.
The only thing Ping publishes automatically (which is creepy enough if you buy
a lot of music) is what you bought in the iTunes Store and who you followed.

This button is just a little shortcut for functionality that already existed
but was ridiculously inaccessible before.

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sosuke
I haven't signed up for Ping yet but does this mean it works for music I
imported to iTunes but did not buy through the iTunes store?

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thought_alarm
You always could. It's just that you had to hunt down the album in the iTunes
Store in order to "Like" something. And it was not "laughably tedious", as
suggested in the article; you just click the little arrow next to the track
name in your Library.

Now you can "Like" stuff directly from your Library.

All they've done is replace that little arrow-button with a pop-up menu. It's
a pretty small change, overall, it just makes things more obvious.

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seiha
I still have no idea how to find my personal URL to add my friends on Ping.

