Everyone's on Facebook. Social networking is the technology trend at the present. It doesn't matter if you're a high school student, a professional stock broker, or a soldier deployed overseas, the prevalence of high speed internet throughout most parts of the world has spurred people to flock to social networking sites. While not the first social networking site, the fad started with MySpace. Eventually the elegant structure, intuitive UI, and lack of tacky music blaring from each page you visit drew people to the superior choice, Facebook.
The true value of social networking comes from having a digital forum that is comprehensive. Facebook draws much of it's value from the fact that most everyone in the country not only has a page, but regularly updates it. With social networking as with most things, structure is nice, but content is king. With Facebook, the users supply the content; the users supply the value.
Seeing the success of MySpace and Facebook, other social networking sites have attempted to get in on the action. Twitter showed just how ADD people could really be. LinkedIn attempted to split the business professionals off from more "consumer" networking sites. The list goes on, but a visit to wikipedia's ever growing list will show you there is a social networking site for just about every special interest.
Now Apple has thrown their hat in the mix. With the release of iTunes 10, Apple is releasing "Ping", their new iTunes based music social networking program. You will often see me praise Apple on this site, but make no mistake, I'm also one of their toughest critics. Ping is a monumentally stupid idea.
Each time a social networking site draws a user to post on it rather than a central or localized site (lets say Facebook), it splits the available social networking content. In addition to people on Facebook not having access to that information, the poster doesn't have access to the people on Facebook. No users win; remember, content is king.
Apple saw the opportunity to integrate the latest fad into their software, and they correctly took it. However creating their own social networking program was the wrong way to go. The smart move would have been to work with other social networking sites, allowing people to put iTunes information on the profiles, walls, status updates, etc. Instead, they've chosen to compete with the market leaders in an already heavily saturated market at the expense of the users.
You may have a different take on this, but I know that I will never use ping. However, if Apple had written an itunes Facebook app/extension with the same abilities, I'd have music posts on my profile right now.
I agree that Ping is a misguided effort on Apple's part. Social networking simply isn't their core competency. Like we talked about in class, today companies must stick to what they do best and partner with others to fulfill their mission. In this case, you're right in saying Apple should have simply stuck with running their iTunes store (which they do very well) and partnered with Facebook on the social networking aspect. Google made the same mistake with Buzz. I have tons of friends who have GMail accounts, but I don't know a single sole who uses Buzz. I feel it's going to the same with Ping.
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