I have been casually using Ping since Apple launched the social music service. I have to say I was excited at the prospect of Apple launching a service like this, after all this is the same company that revitalized the mp3 player marketplace in the late-90s and set the bar for all future mp3 players and then created a phone that all smart phones have since been compared to.
I was excited, however I have found it a little lacking. One of the features I was really hoping Ping would have is a list of the last few songs I had played with iTunes. Think about that for a second, if someone recommends a song or movie you might check it out but if the song shows up on someone’s playlist maybe even repeatedly you are more likely to believe the review and more likely to check it out. The core idea behind social media is sharing, but in a real genuine manner, not in a salesy, shill-like manner.
I am also a little disappointed in the recommendations that Apple provided. Apple has the info on all of my iTunes purchases and has the info on the all of Genius playlists I asked about and probably has all the tracking info on every piece of music, video or app I have looked at but instead of recommending I follow alternative rock artists I get Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne along with others as recommendations. I have nothing against either of those artist but neither performer is really the type of music I listen to. Even more ridiculous is that neither of those artists as written a review. So even if they listened to bands I might like I wouldn’t know it.
There is also no way in this version of the recommendation service to tie it into other social media services such as twitter or facebook.
I am not going to give up on this service just yet since it has just launched and I would like to see where it ends up going in the next version of it but I won’t be actively participating in the service.
