Apple has planned to kill its own music-centric social network, Ping. The company is going to release iTunes match upgrade for iOS 6 later this fall. Undoubtedly, the shutting down of social network would be considered as Apple’s one of the debacles. At present, Apple feels an embarrassment due to failure of Ping. However, the company endeavored to bring a significant number of users together on the social network platform, but unfortunately; it was failed in its mission.
Apple’s CEO—Tim Cook—stated, “We tried Ping and I think the customer voted and this isn’t something I want to put a lot of energy into.”
In September 2010, Apple introduced Ping, a music-centric social network, built in with iTunes. The social network allows users and their friends to listen the music and find out the tune which they are interest for. In addition to these, they can also follow band to keep the track of music, concert listing and check out the album chart. However, the social network surpass 1 million marks in just few weeks of its launch, but later, user felt anorexigenic to be on such social network platform.
Why Has Ping Failed?
First, it’s music centric social network. It has been designed by taking consideration of ‘music fanatics’ in the mind. The social network provides unnecessarily automatic censorship, which seems lackluster among majority of users. Second, the social network is not providing any information related to status and updates of users, which is generally seen on other social networking sites.
Foremost important paraphernalia is here that Ping has been designed for the promotion of Apple’s products and services, it’s meant that the social network seems like commercial site rather than social networking sites.
What Will Apple Try To Do?
On Monday, the company announced forthcoming OSs—Mac Os X Mountain Lion and iOS 6—will be integrated with Facebook. The company will try to enhance its business by teaming up with the world’s leading social networking website. However, I have already elaborated how Apple could leverage over Facebook. Undoubtedly, Apple is one of the fearsome competitors and it might obviously have learned lesson from Ping.
Now, when user will access the two of the leading music networks—Rdio and Spotify—they can simultaneously link with their Facebook account and can watch the activities of their friends, which is very painful in the case of Ping. Indeed, ‘signing in’ and ‘finding out’ the friends on the music centric social network is really very difficult job. However, Apple understood the fact somewhat earlier that going alone with Ping was a big gaff and eventually, teamed with Twitter. Still, it was not enough because at that time a significant numbers of users wanted their friend on Facebook.
Anyway, Apple is going to kill its own social Network (Ping) and it has integrated Twitter and Facebook into its forthcoming OSs. This time, Apple seems very aggressive towards a steadfast social network platform. Do you think, Apple’s decision to Kill Ping is trustworthy?
