Michal Ždanský As of October 1, 2012, Apple officially shut down its music social network Ping, which Steve Jobs introduced in September 2010 as part of iTunes 10. The social experiment failed to gain the favor of users, artists, or important partners that could take Ping to the masses.
Ping was a very bold experiment from the start. Apple, with practically zero experience, started to create a very specific social network, which assumed that users have a huge interest in everything related to music. When Steve Jobs introduced Ping at the keynote, it seemed like an interesting idea. A social network integrated directly into iTunes, where you can follow individual performers, read their statuses, monitor the release of new albums or see where and what concerts will be held. At the same time, you could connect with your friends and follow each other's music preferences.
Ping's failure stems from several fronts. Probably the most important factor is the general change of society and its perception of music. Not only has the music industry and music distribution changed, but so has the way people interact with music. While music used to be a lifestyle, nowadays it has become more of a backdrop. Fewer people go to concerts, fewer DVDs of performances are bought. People just don't live with music the way they used to, which is also seen in the declining sales of iPods. Could any music social network succeed at all in this day and age?
Another problem was the very philosophy of the network in terms of interacting with friends. It's like she assumes that your friends will have the same taste as you, and therefore you'll be interested in what other people are listening to. It's just that in reality you don't generally choose your friends based on your musical tastes. And if the user were to include in his Ping circles only those with whom he agrees on music at least for the most part, his timeline will not be very rich in content. And in terms of content, Ping had the annoying feature of showing an option to immediately buy the song for every mention of music, so many users saw the whole network as nothing more than an iTunes advertising board.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]Over time, the entire social network died on the decline, because ultimately no one cared about it.[/su_pullquote]
The last nail in the coffin was also only partial support of other social networks. While Twitter began to cooperate with Apple relatively early and offered relatively rich integration on its pages, it was the exact opposite with Facebook. Even the experienced and talented negotiator Steve Jobs, who was able to convince stubborn record companies about digital distribution, could not get Mark Zuckerberg to cooperate. And without the support of the world's largest social network, Ping's chances of gaining popularity among users were even smaller.
To top it all off, Ping was not intended for all iTunes users, its availability was limited to only the final 22 countries, which did not include the Czech Republic or Slovakia (if you did not have a foreign account). Over time, the entire social network died on the decline, because ultimately no one cared about it. The failure of Ping was also acknowledged by Apple CEO Tim Cook at the May conference D10 organized by the magazine All Things D. According to him, customers were not as enthusiastic about Ping as they had hoped for Apple, but he added that Apple has to be social, even if it does not have its own social network. Also related is the integration of Twitter and Facebook into OS X and iOS, while some of Ping's features have become a general part of iTunes.
Ping was thus buried after two troubled years, similar to other failed projects, namely Pippin or iCards. May he rest in peace, but we will not miss him, after all, few people even noticed the end of the social network.
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