Ping gets two million users in two days

Apple’s music social network Ping has gained two million users in two days. Ping is the focal point of iTunes 10 and was introduced last week at an Apple event. Is Ping the future for social music, or just a passing craze?

It’s true Ping has got a lot more press than other social music start-ups; and to join you just need to opt in using your existing iTunes account. This ease of sign-up could help to explain the influx of new users in such a short space of time.

Ping allows users to follow their favourite artists to receive updates, news and show information.

These numbers are impressive considering Ping’s rocky beginning. On 2 September, one day after launch, the service suffered international availability problems, making it inaccessible to large areas of their iTunes user base – even those who had downloaded iTunes 10.

Two days later, Ping was hit by a wave of spam from users promising free iPhones, iPads and other Apple products. This put me off using the service – and probably many other people felt the same way.

Apple revealed that a third of users who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping.

The numbers do not distinguish between those who are active on it daily and those who just signed up out of curiosity and haven’t opted out. My guess is this service will need integration with other social media sites to survive in the long run. If an artist updates their Twitter, it updates their Ping for example.

Can Ping last longer than a week? Without the full support of other social media sites, the answer must surely be “no”. But if an artist or label could update fans on one website and have it automatically update all other information sources online. that service will become invaluable.

Two days after launch, Ping’s Facebook Connect feature was dropped, or just taken down. This was the only social media site supported by the application and allowed users to sync their Ping activity with Facebook and invite their Facebook friends.

Why would it be removed when Facebook Connect features have helped boost other music networks such as Spotify?

It was reported that Facebook revoked Apple’s API access because Apple and Facebook failed to reach an agreement. According to Facebook’s API Terms and Conditions, any developer’s access can be removed at any time.

The key to Ping’s success is being able to share music. This will only happen when full song previews are available. It needs to compete with the likes of Spotify which already offer this.

As an avid Mac-lover, I know not to get too settled on the first generation of anything from the company. It is always used to test the water and shortly afterwards an update is released. So I look forward to Ping’s update with more social media integration and more competitive features.