
Ping: It's even worse than it appeared - davewiner
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/09/02/pingItsEvenWorseThanItAppe.html
======
chrischen
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.

~~~
dododo
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.

~~~
chrischen
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.

------
olefoo
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.

~~~
cowboyhero
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.

~~~
glhaynes
_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.

------
ErrantX
Site seems to be down; here's a google cache for now

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://scripting.com/stories/2010/09/02/pingItsEvenWorseThanItAppe.html)

------
JoelMcCracken
Scripting.com: It's even worse than it appeared

(running on windows, one might add)

~~~
astrodust
Running a site on Windows is embarrassing enough, worse when your pants fall
down like this.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
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!

~~~
cowboyhero
Fair point -- but you'd think Winer would have enough experience to allow his
apps to fail gracefully.

Printing out ugly error messages complete with file system paths in html is
definitely a pants-dropping kind of move.

------
RyanMcGreal
I'm getting the following error:

    
    
        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.

~~~
davewiner
Sorry for the outage. The site is back up now. Fingers crossed, praise Murphy.
:-)

~~~
RyanMcGreal
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?

~~~
davewiner
I use Apache to serve the static content.

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.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Thanks for clarifying. So OPML Editor generates the static content beforehand
and then Apache serves it?

------
zzzmarcus
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.

------
pmorici
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.

~~~
cobralibre
_Fact is that beyond a small group of influencers nobody gives a crap what
anyone is saying on Twitter._

If, by "small group of influencers," you mean "my friends," then sure, I
agree.

------
danielhfrank
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...

------
cmelbye
_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.

------
lux
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.

------
hans
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 ...

------
edkennedy
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.

------
willheim
Most interesting aspect of that article is the second update at the bottom
linking to a post that so perfectly sumnmarizes Steve Jobs... written in 1997.
[http://www.scripting.com/davenet/stories/DocSearlsonSteveJob...](http://www.scripting.com/davenet/stories/DocSearlsonSteveJobs.html)

------
cletus
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.

