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Comment by RyanMcGreal | Hacker News Reader

Next week on Daring Fireball: Why Ping is much smarter than you think and will prove the naysayers wrong.

Actually, if you're into cool, trendier, up-and-coming, non-mainstream music, Ping is pretty fantastic. The first recommended follow for me was Alexandra Patsavas who is the christener of cool when it comes to indie music. Ping got it spot on. I have no more need for using MySpace. I hate to brand all the naysayers wrong, but frankly they don't seem to share the same musical tastes as I do. I'd like to think I have pretty damn good taste, better than the naysayers :)

The naysayers seem to have wanted a Facebook replacement. I hate FB. Ping is a nice domain-specific social network. It serves a purpose, like LinkedIn. And I quite like it.

I think the point is that it should be fantastic for everyone regardless of what or how they listen. It's sitting there managing your music collection, it supplies genius recommendations based on it for goodness sake, a goldmine of data there for the taking. Yet because they've so heavily tilted it towards being an add-on to their shop (more Amazon than Facebook) it's a barren and unwelcoming prospect for anyone who doesn't already live inside the iTunes store bubble.

Maybe that's intentional, if you're not buying then maybe they don't want you in their social network. It's just a bit odd as every other social network is rabidly gathering users and putting off finding a business model till after it hits critical mass.

Also, a social network that only lets people in who have "good" taste would wither pretty quickly due to their limited numbers and wouldn't be financially supportable by Apple. A social network that only worked for people who get their music recommendations from the O.C. and Gossip Girl soundtracks on the other hand might just be some new circle of hell.

It should be fantastic to its market, which it is. Everyone is not a market.

> Actually, if you're into cool, trendier, up-and-coming, non-mainstream music, Ping is pretty fantastic.

No. Really, no it's not.

> if you're into cool, trendier, up-and-coming, non-mainstream music

> I'd like to think I have pretty damn good taste, better than the naysayers :)

You listen to indie rock and use a Windows or OSX operating system, what could be more mainstream. Spare us the narcissism and let me know when iTunes is on Ubuntu and minimal techno is a genre choice.

Niche social networks are great, but I think the obvious comparison is Last.fm . No one is comparing it to FaceBook or MySpace.

> the christener of cool when it comes to indie music

Off-topic: the idea that indie music needs a professional gatekeeper seems ... contrary.

Just like everything else hipsters enjoy, indie music is "ironic".

How can something be cool and trendy while also being obscure and not mainstream? Don't "cool" and "trendy" imply prestige and popularity?

No. Cool and trendy mean that something is on the path to being mainstream. When it does hit mainstream, it's passé. :-)

Lol,

"Cool" and "hip" once meant stuff too groovy for the squares to dig. But that was well in the past now...

"The first recommended follow for me was Alexandra Patsavas"

She's the first recommended follow for everyone.

Surprised how many people have failed to work this out - the "recommendations" are the same for everyone. There are basically 12 artist profiles in the whole system.

It's pretty obvious when you watch the keynote, and realize that the list of recommended artists are all ones that Jobs flashed for a few seconds while diddling around in "his" library in each product demo.

I can't tell whether you're trying to subtly troll hipsters here or if you really feel validated by Ping, and are smug about liking the kind of music which Alexandra Patsavas decides will be enjoyable to middle America.

Wait, down-voted you before I realized the parody...

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