A New Beginning

Got Ping! According to several sources, come this fall you won't much longer. If you shop for music at iTunes then you may or may not have used Ping. Ping is Apple's social network designed to share your music purchases with your online friends. Having failed to gain an adequate user base, Apple has decided to call it quits.

Starting this fall, with the next major iTunes release, Ping will no longer be included. Personally, I have mixed feelings about this latest news. I have a Ping account and in as much as I have used it from time to time, there were those occasions, while online and at other social networks, that I would forget to open my iTunes player so that I could access the interface. Perhaps, this was the same for many other Ping users. The only way to access Ping is by having an iTunes account and user ID. If you shop for music at other sites or used other music players to search for downloads, then it's likely that when you found what you were looking for, if you shared your findings, you either used Facebook or Twitter.

Ping did however allow users to sync their accounts with Twitter. But, and I'm only guessing that those who did so probably didn't do so for very long, probably not wanting Ping users to view everything that they may have been tweeting. I chose not to sync accounts, preferring to visit the iTunes store and add my info manually. I thought that in this way, I could give Ping users that follow Nprogram something that they couldn't get any where else. Sometimes this worked but often time constraints made it impossible to do anything but what I had done at the other sites. But, there are two things that I liked. I liked being able to recommend music to others, and the ability to post up to 10 songs or albums that you are listening to. In that way, at least as an artist, fans of your music can get a sense of what music inspires you. You don't get that at the other sites.

Apple is now looking to future integration with Facebook and Twitter, with the release of what may possibly be iTunes 11. Most likely, the next version of iTunes will feature the same type of integration that you find currently with Spotify. While I've used Spotify I haven't shared what I've been listening to while doing so.

But, have no fear. No doubt greater integration with existing social sites may mean that iTunes and Apple will bring with them not only more innovation, but a new beginning for social music networking.