At Apple’s announcement fest Wednesday, among the launch of the new iPods and the $99 Apple TV box, was the announcement about Ping, a music-based social network that out-of-the-gate has more than 160 million users, all with credit cards. Of course, it’s only about music today, but there’s nothing to stop Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) from expanding it if it suits its purposes down the road.
In many ways, this puts Apple ahead of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), where some people spend money on games, but active spending on the site is not the norm. In fact, Facebook introduced a new gift card today at Target Stores, which allows people to buy Facebook credits or give them as gifts. I’m not sure enough Facebook users actually spend money regularly on the social network to make this worthwhile, but it's an attempt to get people used to spending. Most of Facebook’s revenue probably comes from advertising and selling information about its users to marketers.
Apple has a distinct advantage in that regard: a captive audience that shares information about music, movies, and TV shows; integrates what people like into the activity stream; builds custom bestseller lists from groups of friends; and gives users the opportunity to buy right in the activity stream. You can’t build a more powerful sales team than an individual’s group of friends.
What’s more, Apple has gotten the artists involved. In his demo, Steve Jobs showed pictures that Jack Johnson had displayed from his latest tour and an exclusive video Lady Gaga made for her fans. This kind of direct access to artists is more powerful than Facebook Fan pages.
And it sounds as if Apple took care to make privacy a priority; you control who you friend and who has access to your information. Apple is even providing the ability to create a closed circle of friends if you wish, where only a small group of people share their information about their music. (Although my jury is still out on the privacy controls until I see the product.)
But Ping doesn’t integrate yet with Facebook, something that may irritate users who want to do more than share on a closed network.
Further, some people clearly weren't excited by the Ping announcement, and it could be that there is some kind of social network fatigue developing. How many can we pay attention to at one time?
In an earlier blog post this week, I speculated whether a small startup like Diaspora, beginning from scratch, could ever hope to dethrone Facebook and its 500 million users. It’s a fair question; but one thing Ping has going for it from Day 1 is a seeded active community with more than 160 million users, most of whom are used to using iTunes to spend money.
Still, Ping suffers from being locked inside iTunes, although Apple was smart enough to create an access application and put it in the App Store for iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone users.
Ping may not be a direct threat to Facebook yet, but with its built-in user base and natural way for people to connect and spend money based on friends’ recommendations, Apple may be onto something here. If Ping catches on, it would be wise for Apple to move it to the open Web where it could grow and develop outside of the iTunes and App Store ecosystems.
Facebook might not have to concern itself with today's announcement just yet, but given Apple's cash, marketing clout, and a very loyal user base, perhaps it should at least pay attention.
— Ron Miller is a freelance technology journalist, blogger, FierceContentManagement editor, and contributing editor at EContent magazine.
I noticed the Spam issue immediately when I signed up last week. I think Apple is working to fix that. Nobody can blame you for taking glee in their problems here, but I think this is a short-term issue, and to be fair, I think we need to give it a little time to develop and see how they respond to problems like this. That said, as George V. Hulme pointed out on InformationWeek, Apple should have anticipated this and not had to react to it. As you rightly point out, it does leave them open to ridicule.
Or rather spammed. Didn't take long at all, did it? This Article appeard on E-Week.com "Apple Ping hit by Spammers." It might be really mean of me but I had a good laugh at that.
I truly think Apple has made itself more of a target after the revelation of Apple's "Terrorware" patent. Intenet Evolution's own Thinker Netter Alan Reiter wrote a blog on it last week.
Regardless, I don't see Netflix competing with Apple, especially given that they have partnered on the Apple TV box. In fact, I plan on buying Apple TV just to get simplified Netflix streaming.
Perhaps you're forgetting that Netflix already has some social networking features that let you share your movie preferences with your friends on Netflix, etc.... So Netflix has already tried a "closed" social network, and it looks like no one has really heard of it outside of Netflix users. So Apple might learn from Netflix and expand its social features to non-iProduct consumers somehow?
I really don't think Apple has any real rivals when it comes to selling music and media online. They are the clear leader and the companies you mention are a minor irritant at best, but the potential to develop a viable commerce-based social network is significant. As I said, it probably won't happen right away, but with a potential user base measured in millions, it could develop slowly over time.
And keep in mind, just because Apple says that people should be discussing music there doesn't mean that's all people will do once they start chatting.
Agreed it's very early days and having tried it yesterday, I can now say that it will take a while to grow and develop, but it definitely has potential. And the big thing it has going for it is this idea of socialized commerce. It may not pay dividends right away, but watch this because it has the potential to be a real game changer (whether or not it's any real threat to FB).
Right on both counts. They have access to 160M potential iTunes users.
You're also correct that according to reports there was apparently an agreement on the table between Apple and FB to access FB users from Ping, and Apple walked away because of the terms. This didn't come out, however, until after I published this piece.
I have one doubt here.. Can Ping create a real threat to FB ?? I doubt so, at least not for few more years, because every one knows what FB is right now and even people who doesn't have an FB account knows what FB is. So in such a scenario can Ping disturb the popularity of FB ?
Rather than getting too focussed on Ping challenging Facebook, I would like to hear what significant advantages Ping has against other music oriented social networking sites such as Rdio and Blip.fm.
It i quite evident that Myspace has been on life support for years, considering the music oriented nature of Myspace do you see Ping could finally land the coupe de grace?
I want to draw your attention to your evaluation that ping has more than 160 million users. I don't know where you get that figure but it seems really suspect. According to Apple, Itunes has 160 million users but only a minute fraction of those users have enrolled in Ping. It seems you have concluded that all itune users have actually enrolled in Ping, which is afar cry from the truth.
According to this NYT article, relation between Facebook and Apple has become frosty since Wednesday when Apple announced this Ping initiative. It is reported that FB has blocked all traffic coming from Ping. Once friends because of their fierce competitive stand against Google, it appears that Apple latest effort to dive into the social networking space would put a serious strain on that relationship.
I may be wrong but I don't think Apple has plan to compete with FB but rather just trying to force FB to make some compromises that will be for business interest in the long term.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
The call (or, should I say, the Twitter DM) finally arrived. My Google Glass is ready. All I need to do is travel to Manhattan and fork over $1,500, and this piece of cutting-edge technology will be all mine.
When a new technology comes along, the standard reaction seems to focus on the most negative aspect of the device at the cost of all positive possibilities.
Recently, the Obama administration has been of two minds where privacy rights are concerned. On one hand, you have an administration that vowed to veto CISPA and mandated open data for government websites. On the other hand, you have an increasingly out-of-control Department of Justice on a fishing expedition at AP and demanding legislation to let the FBI wiretap private, encrypted communications and levy fines if a company fails to comply.
These days, even some usually techno-friendly people have their hackles up about the potential of Google Glass to surreptitiously record video or take pictures. I've heard more than one tech savvy friend bring up "the creep factor," the ability of a weird guy to secretly record you.
We think Amazon's Kindle Fire is pushing Apple to a smaller iPad format. But Sony's Vita and the interest in a small device for portable gaming may create the real threat. Keep your eye on the tablet-gaming space!
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
Apple may want to do a TV offering, but to meet its goal it would have to address three specific issues that have been exposed by earlier attempts to make Internet TV work.
Yahoo's new CEO can't go back to what Yahoo was; that's how it got to what it is! Instead she has to look at something that Yahoo has always rejected, which is a relationship with the telcos and cablecos. They'd love a partner in creating service applications.
Introducing Shopycat, a Facebook app for sort of maybe determining what to buy your friends and family for the holidays. Analytics at its finest? Not so much.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Email This
