How Ping Might Grow | Hacker News Reader

How Ping Might Grow

daringfireball.net

16 pointsblazamos9 comments

Prize goes to RyanMcGreal: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659802

I chuckled, but - to be fair - Gruber's article hardly suggests that Ping is "smarter than you think" or that it will "prove the naysayers wrong".

In fact, I find the meekness of the article interesting. Maybe it's an acknowledgement of Ping's lack of current success that Gruber couldn't think of anything more exciting than "Here are some general ideas for why Ping might grow some day."

Gruber is good at examining things Apple does and pointing out possible rationales Apple had in doing them. That’s easy to mistake for uncritical acceptance of everything Apple produces, especially if that’s your preconceived notion. Gruber was never a critic of Apple and never claimed to be. His goal seems to me to be to explain Apple.

I don’t think Gruber’s personal opinion even matters all that much in what he writes. Oh, sure, he won’t hide it but as long as the explanations are sound I don’t care.

Gruber is so predictable

RyanMcGreal 4 days ago

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

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659802

Can Ping recover from such a lame initial offering, though? Will people who checked it out now and decided it was lame ever come back?

What % of the 9-digit number of iTunes users do you think has even downloaded iTunes 10 and noticed the Ping tab on the side?

What % of users will be extremely excited to know they can follow what Katy Perry and Cold Play are doing?

Which of those two numbers do you think is larger?

The answer to your first question seems to be 33% [+] but that number could be skewed because early downloaders might be well aware of the new features and more likely to try them out.

[+] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/03ping.html

My baseless suspicion is that Ping, like iTunes LP, is just something Apple did to keep the record industry happy. Someone important probably had a revelation, 5 years too late, that they need to get in on that social thing the kids like so much and Apple was more than happy to placate them. I agree with Gruber that it could turn into something more down the road but at this point Apple's heart obviously isn't in it. Maybe because all the pieces aren't in place yet. I could imagine Ping looking a lot more like Lala 6 months from now when all the right deals are signed.

But, clearly, Apple created Ping to drive the sale of additional music — and I think that’s why Ping isn’t a standalone app — if it were, then clicking a “Buy” link in Ping would take you from the (hypothetical) Ping app to the iTunes app. Then you’d have to remember to switch back to Ping to get back to where you were.

I don't know how iPhone users live without a back button.

edit: really folks?

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