It’s a Friday night, which means it’s time for a “Mamba Query”!

This week:
It’s been over a week since Ping was unleashed to the world with a collective “Meh” of ambivalence. Apple’s new massive social network allowing people to follow others and see what music they like has had a ton of people sign up via their iTunes account, but what exactly is Apple doing?

My answer:
People seem to have looked at Ping as Apple’s great foray in the social networking battle believing it to be the best thing since digital music players were popularized by silhouettes dancing on a coloured background, except that Ping doesn’t appear to do much at all aside from the basics. You can create a profile, you can find other people and follow them like Twitter, but that seems to be about it. Sure, finding out that your mate Dave has bought and enjoyed the latest N-Dubz track may be a high point in your life, but trying to focus it through music just doesn’t do it for me. Granted, Twitter could be seen as simple as this, but at least Twitter allowed for people to use pretty much any application they want on any device they want, compared to Ping’s iTunes and iPhone only offerings. Maybe restricting the population to iDevices will make people stop moving to other phones if their network is at risk, and it’s part of a big plan.
If you’re looking for a social network built to make people connect with their music, it doesn’t take much searching to find someone that does a similar job but far better. Last.fm has been doing it for years, showing what you last played to the general public and allowing people to find each other through similar tastes. I worry for Last.fm’s safety in all of this, and I would be unhappy if it disappears because of the iCrowd.
I do wonder what exactly Apple would do with this social network to fill it out. It’s an interesting thought…

If you have any thoughts or believe I’m completely wrong about Last.fm, feel free to comment away below.