Just when you thought you created your last online profile, Apple CEO Steve Jobs rolls out Ping, a music-based social network within the iTunes juggernaut (consisting of 160 million potential users).
Posing a significant threat to Last.fm, Jobs offered the following during Apple’s spring conference: "Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes ... but it's not Facebook, it's not Twitter. It's a social network all about music."
Despite the nod, Ping doesn’t integrate with Twitter or Facebook (yet).
Once you download the latest iTunes update (10), it takes about five minutes to set up a profile and you’re posting, liking, influencing friends and following your favorite artists -- all in the name of increasing iTunes commerce.
Sign me up!
Once registered, Ping identifies your musical tastes and associates artists with your profile -- in my case, Radiohead, Pinback and Hall & Oates (guilty pleasure).
Additionally, the service integrates upcoming concerts in the San Diego area with your iTunes playlist.
Aside from being a social network for the music enthusiast -- in fact, I look forward to following SoundDiego’s very own SDDialedin and OwlandBear -- from a local/independent artist’s standpoint, Ping can be a tremendous resource for building a global community/network with direct access to your material. Personally, if I was in a band, I would embrace this technology immediately.
So, are you on Ping? What’s your initial review? Follow me, and I'll follow you.
Chris Cantore, SoundDiego's anchor contributor and a longtime fixture on San Diego radio, is on the air weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 102.1 KPRI. Follow Chris on Twitter @chriscantore or send him a story idea.
