Apple’s New Social Networking: Ping

Map of social media may be changed. Apple is now entering the realm of social networks by providing a new service called Ping and Game Center.

“This is a social network of music,” said Steve Jobs, Apple founder and CEO, while he was launching Ping in San Francisco, quoted from the BBC website.

Ping is built on the latest iTunes software. Only, Ping adds social networking concepts into it. With Ping, users can create a profile of their selves, a network of friends, complete with music play lists.

This service can be accessed via iTunes software 10 that has been available for Mac and PC versions, or through the iTunes application on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

“We think this will be popular because 160 million people (iTunes users) can already use it,” said Jobs optimistically. Not only Ping, on the same occasion, Apple also released the Game Center.

Game Center is an online gaming service for iOS platform devices (iPhone OS). Through this service, users can challenge each other colleagues for specific games. They can also show off their achievement scores in one game to their other colleagues.

This is not new thing. Before Ping, Microsoft also has provided a similar service for its Zune music player owners. Some features in Ping also have been provided by the Spotify and Last.fm. But so far is that iTunes has the largest user.

When such services Game Centre also were enjoyed by Xbox Live users. But Xbox Live is a paid service. When games on Facebook ran on Flash, in fact often can not be accessed through most mobile phones.

According to analysts from CCS-research-firm, this is an Apple’s ambitious step challenging other social networks that already exist.

“They will soon find a way to differentiate their products with other social networks. Because so many people have used iTunes, this is a natural extension,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst of the Altimeter Group.

Even, the appearance of Ping is also feared going to finish off the remnants of the triumph of MySpace that so far is quite popular among musicians.

“Ping will destroy what remains on the market share of MySpace,” said Xeni Jardin, a Co editor in Technology of Boing-Boing. If is already like this, Facebook was reasonable to become vigilant.