Ping Sounds Like More than Music For Apple

Posted by Paolo Mottola on
Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at 7:38 am

“Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes… It’s a social network all about music,” was how Steve Jobs described Ping during another monster Apple event last week.

He lied between his teeth.

Ping, Apple’s new social networking service, is as much about music as Facebook was about college students circa 2005. Music is the obvious marketing bait given iTunes’ position as a music and entertainment storefront, but Ping is much more about connecting the population of iOS users and introducing them to a preferred network for their preferred devices. Ping introduces Apple’s iTunes customers to that next generation of ecommerce – social commerce.

The move is genius, really (Pun intended).

Dedicated social networks to date (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) have all started out online, growing their users through unique experiences and eventually pushing out specialized experiences to mobile devices. Apple has taken an opposite approach by selling millions of mobile devices first, and then pushing the network out to the users who rely on those devices. Mind you, Apple has sold 120 million iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches and sold 6.5 billion applications via the iTunes App Store.

Consumers don’t have a choice. If they want to use Apple devices, and Apple requires they have a profile – much like Google requires Gmail for its Android devices – then Apple suddenly has a multi-million person network at its disposal. You thought you only had an iTunes login. Now you have a Ping profile! Ta da!

Amazon and Facebook, watch out. Apple already has a robust, competitive ecommerce system in iTunes, and all Apple has to do is open profile pages to brands – much like Facebook has – and allow them to sell. That’s an easy solution for consumers who already have their credit cards stored on iTunes, and a better solution for brands who are struggling to turn a direct profit via Facebook.

Apple’s Ping isn’t a guaranteed success, much like Google Wave wasn’t, but the idea of a social network introduced directly into iTunes, a healthy ecommerce platform with 160 million users, is a good jumpstart. If Apple can overcome what seems like a culture experiencing social networking fatigue much the same way it overcame a non-existent market for tablets – by providing a superior experience – then we’ll have a shake-up, and you’ll be buying your jeans from your Ping profile in some iMarket in the near future.

Paolo Mottola is a MCDM student and manages social media at Eddie Bauer. The opinions expressed here are his own. He can be found @paolojr, facebook.com/paolojr and at his personal blog, The Digital Hangover.