Just in two days, Apple’s Ping music social network has 1 million users .
Apple introduced Ping as the centerpiece of iTunes 10 at its music event earlier this week. It is a music-centric social network where users can follow updates from both their friends and their favorite music artists. It includes custom song and album charts, a news feed and 17,000+ concert listings.
Pings built on the latest iTunes software. Only, Ping adding social networking concepts into it. With Ping, users can create a profile of yourself, a network of friends, complete with music playlists. This service can be accessed via iTunes software 10 that has been available for Mac and PC versions of it, or through the iTunes application on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
"We think this will be popular because 160 million people (iTunes users-red) can already use it," said Jobs is optimistic. Not only Ping, on the same occasion, Apple also released the Game Center. Game Center is an online gaming service for IOS platform devices (iPhone OS). Through this service, users can challenge each other colleagues for specific games.
They can also show off their achievement scores in one game to their counterparts else. This is not new. Prior to Ping, Microsoft also has provided a similar service for its Zune music player owners. Some features in Ping also been provided by the Spotify and Last.fm. But so far is that iTunes has the largest user.
While such services GameCentre also been enjoyed by Xbox Live users. But Xbox Live is a paid service. While games-games on Facebook that runs in Flash, in fact often can not be accessed through most mobile phones. According to analysts from research firm CCS, this is an ambitious step to challenging Apple's other social networks that already exist. "They will soon find a way to differentiate their products with other social networks. Because so many have to use iTunes, this is a natural extension, "said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst from the Altimeter Group.
Ping also feared the emergence of even going to finish off the remnants of the triumph of MySpace that so far is quite popular among musicians. "Ping will destroy what remains on the market share of MySpace," said Xeni Jardin, an editor Co. Technology blog Boing-Boing. If you already like this, Facebook was reasonable to begin vigilant.
