Less than 48 hours after Apple launched Ping, a music centric social networking site, the company claimed that more than 1 million users had signed on.    1 million happy users?  Maybe not.   The press certainly has lots of skeptics which reflects concerns by Ping users. The criticisms range from it not being truly connected to the web, to it not being well integrated into an iTunes user’s own music library.  Dave Winer from Scripting News writes, "Ping is not a social network, by any realistic definition of the term... My guess as to why we can't post to the timeline is that Apple is afraid we might say something harsh about them or Ping." Meanwhile  TechCrunch’s Eric Schonfeld writes,   "The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web."

The list of things that iTunes does not do currently is very significant list.  It does not allow cross-linking to Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.  It doesn’t let ordinary users posts songs or notes. It only offers very limited range of genres and songs that can be designated as “Music I Like”.    There is no simple way to connect with friends to see what music they are listening to or to share playlists with others.   Perhaps Ping was released before it was ready to come out of the oven to be served.  Perhaps Apple needs to realize that social networking is about connecting with others, the web and in the case of iTunes with a person’s own music library.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/06/can-ping-be-saved/