Why Apple’s Ping Is Doomed

Well, they finally did it. Apple jumped into the online community game. Unfortunately, they haven’t landed very smoothly. In fact, I’m not certain that they even made it into the pool.

The social and UX pundits are weighing in on the utility of Apple’s social music experiment, and overall, it’s not good. From my perspective here are the two largest problems with Ping:

1. Apple and Steve Jobs are not particularly fond of openness and ceding control. The scant number of musical genres, the fact that your avatar photo must be reviewed are examples, as is the fact that they’ve strictly controlled the artists that appear as suggestions. For Ping to succeed, Apple must be willing to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the community. Not gonna happen.
2. It’s a closed ecosystem. Users can’t access Ping in a standard browser (really?!). Users can’t easily share content via other social platforms, and activity is based solely on iTunes purchases. The last bit is the most inane – people download (or import) music from sources outside iTunes whether Apple likes it or not.

For my money Last.fm is the music community to beat. Sure, they have their issues, but Last.fm is focused on helping the community connect around a shared passion: music and the artists that they love. Apple should take a lesson from them.

Posted in Music, Social Media, User Experience | 1 Comment »