How Apple's Ping dings Twitter, Facebook

How Apple's Ping dings Twitter, Facebook
The thing is, iTunes happens to be inhabited by 160 million people. But, unlike the inhabitants of, say, Facebook and Twitter, they at least all have something in common. It may not be the same band, but it's the same passion for one band or another. So Apple believes that by starting one big musical cocktail party it can create more connections, more sharing, more feeling and therefore more buying. Where Facebook and Twitter exist to be everything to everyone, in the hope that everyone finds the right someone to follow, to befriend or to ignore, Ping focuses on a conversation we have all had: at a bar, at a concert, even at a wake.It starts with some version of a very simple question: what music do you like? It's a far safer question than "What people do you like?" And it is an automatic starting point for an open conversation. What is quite lovely about Ping is that you can make it as open or closed a conversation as you like. While Facebook has forced people to be more open--often against their knowledge--in order to build its business, Ping begins by giving you simple privacy settings. It even--strange, strange concept, this--asks you to opt-in, rather than bulldozing you into interactions for which you are either unprepared or in which you are plainly reluctant to participate.Ping picks at the nice parts of Facebook and Twitter--friending and following--and offers these benefits to its users without the generalists' pains. Unlike Twitter, for example, these are all real people. Unlike Facebook, you can just wander around and see who or what you like without having to become someone's friend and without having to like anything at all.This is real people with a real enthusiasm meeting in a bar and talking about a subject they love, rather than about a subject they often hate--themselves. There's very nice music playing in the background, too. How many truly passionate, fundamental enthusiasms do large numbers of people share? Movies and sports, probably. Books and food, perhaps. (I wonder if there really are all that many.) Right now, these are often all being talked about on Facebook, each fighting with another for sufficient attention across very mixed groups.It might not happen that hundreds of niche social networks will suddenly become enormously successful as people decide to fragment themselves across their various enthusiasms. But there are a few core subjects that arouse passion, conversation and the spending of money. Music is one. Apple is another.