Last week Apple announced Ping – “social network that’s all about music.” According to Steve Jobs “it’s Facebook meets Twitter meets iTunes.” Basically Ping is a social network where users can follow their friends and their favorite artists. They can also post photos, videos, events, and simultaneously share their music.
Immediately this started the debate. Is this a new social network? And is Ping a threat to Facebook and other social networks?
It sure looks to me like Apple is positioning itself as a direct competitor to Facebook. There may not be an immediate threat to a well-established platforms like Facebook; however, as history showed, Apple is capable of surprising us. So let’s take a look.
Why Facebook should worry:
- Ping has immediate access to over 160 million iTune users.
- Apple has a platform that is rather attractive to developers.
- Apple has a very loyal and digitally-savvy following.
- Apple’s platform already has payment capability.
- Apple’s platform offers premium content.
- Apple owns physical platforms (iPhone, iPods, Mac products, etc.).
Why Facebook shouldn’t worry (just yet):
- There isn’t the ability to build applications that integrate with Ping just yet. “Just yet” are the key words here.
- To compete with Facebook, Ping needs to be global. Currently the service is only available in 20+ countries.
- Even with 160 million iTune users, Apple is still a niche product that is not being used all around the world consistently.
- The users currently don’t have the ability to import friends from Facebook. According to multiple accounts, Facebook and Apple did have initial integration discussions. But there is currently some friction between the two. Facebook blocked Apple’s access to their open programming interface citing the potential of crashed servers from Ping’s overwhelming traffic. However, some feel like this is a weak excuse to cover up a bigger issue.
- There have been multiple complaints about the bugs in the platform ever since it’s launched. This is totally fixable though, so from my perspective it’s only the matter of time until Apple improves the user experience.
What are your thoughts?