iTunes Ping - Review

Apple recently released a new music-centric social networking service called "Ping".  At the moment, it looks half-baked at best, useless at worst.

Here's some of the things I think are wrong or missing as of now:
1. Another "walled garden" that's separate from other social networks, especially facebook.  I think this is the biggest failing - searching for friends who participate in the service by their names or email addresses one-by-one SUCKS.  Period.
2. The artists that are participating are relatively sparse at this point, and I suspect Apple recruited those who are there.  Also, independent artists can't setup an "Artist" profile on their own - currently they've got to setup a personal account profile.
3. The "following" of specific artists isn't integrated properly with their iTunes store listing.  If a particular artist is for sale on the iTunes, you should be able to follow them from there, regardless of whether they have setup an artist profile in Ping.

When Steve Jobs demoed the new iTunes "Ping" social networking service, it had Facebook friend finding.  Apparently the feature was pulled last minute because Apple used a Facebook API without approval.  Even if that feature was still there, it's not enough.  The status updates, etc. should be fully integrated into Facebook.  If iTunes Ping remains a separate social network, it will fail.

I've gone over to the dark side... ;)

Since I'm working on actually doing some additional marketing, I'm looking at a number of options. Someone suggested using Facebook as another method of marketing. 

At first, I scoffed at the suggestion. I had a personal account on Facebook before, but found it annoying. That being said, she made a compelling argument, and I had no idea that I could create a "corporate presence" there.

I took the advice and setup a company page, but maintaining it requires that you also have a personal account as well.  Facebook generates a ton of emails - someone took a trip, posted pictures, and got 35 comments - you'll get at least 35 emails detailing the blow-by-blow for each. So I setup a rule on my Outlook to automatically move Facebook emails to a folder called "Facebook". 

It's only been a week or so, but we'll see how it goes.  Click the Facebook link on the right and be sure to click "Like" once you're on the "Geek to The Rescue - Burbank, CA" page.