evan's niblets

I really want to like Ping. I always keep my Ping sidebar open, even though my better judgement tells me that I'm just wasting space in my already overly-crowded iTunes window. Perhaps, I'm driven in my faith in Apple that somehow it'll get better, but thus far, it has been a disappointment.

It seems like common knowledge that Ping hasn't been very successful. I could cite more than one possible factor as to why that is, but I believe the biggest missing element is simply the lack of personal content. So far, all celebrity Ping accounts I've seen seem to be comprised entirely of self-promoting posts. For example, at the time of me writing this, here's Paul McCartney's 2 latest Ping posts:

Wow! Paul liked 2 albums... McCartney and McCartney II... what a surprise! Subscribing to his feed would be like subscribing to a magazine of only ads. Of course it is a turn off. But what if we also got to see posts like "Paul McCartney purchased (This Song) by (This Artist)"? It would be much more compelling content. And it's win-win, because he'd probably gain more followers who would be more likely to read his self-promotional posts too.

I think this is one of the reasons Twitter is so successful. When I follow someone like Sarah Silverman tweet, here's an example of what I might see:

It's that feeling of real access to someone whom you're a fan, that makes Twitter feel more personal. Every Sarah Silverman post isn't "@SarahKSilverman likes her own comedy special!". There is a reason why advertisements usually accompany content you're interested in, instead of trying to BE the content.

To be fair, Paul's Twitter doesn't have any personal content either. Some of his Paul's tweets even start with "Paul will be..." in the 3rd person, removing all doubt that he's actually posting something personally.

I don't know if Ping will ever be fixed. Obviously Apple can't mandate that Paul post his real iTunes activity for all his fans to see. But I think there is a real opportunity for some well-known artists on Ping to start being real and kickoff a new era in Ping, that actually has content people would be interested in reading.