Full Analysis of Apple Ping

With fans around the world, Apple's social network Ping is to shut end.

Recently, the release of Apple iPhone5 fell into a series of verbal violence, as we recently some of the things happened around you. But with its unquestioning subjected to "violence", you really think about the reality of the problem, such as why Apple's social products not doing well.

Apple announced the music Ping social networking products will close on September 30. Apple launched Ping in September 2010 with iTunes10, and pinned to it-"iTunes10isallaboutPing,Apple'ssocialnetworkformusic". After the launched of Ping within 48 hours, Apple announced that users exceeded 1 million, but Apple has never released data associated with Ping.

Ping soon actually showed a decline. In November 2010, Ping and Twitter collaboration allowed Ping users add to your favorite music on Twitter. In that month, forward message from a Ping on a day only about 3,000.

As one of the top companies, Apple has fans all over the world. Apple has sold more than 400 million iOS devices so far, which means that Apple has hundreds of millions of users. If you want to choose a company to do social networking, in addition to Google, I am afraid there is no more appropriate than Apple. But why should Apple do not Ping well?

Bad experience

Unmatched user experience of Apple hardware, developers all over the world want to imitate Apple. But it is hard to imagine that Apple will launch a Ping such a poor experience of the social product. Ping does not have a Web page, content can only be released through iTunes. In addition, the sharing and recommended features of Ping is also doing not good enough, for example, sharing the same could not be done directly on the Ping, but through the iTunes store.

What is Ping

While Apple clearly define Ping as a social product, on product design and user's Guide, this product more around the iTunes store, even more like a to sell iTunes music products. Even the marketing of this Ping was not ready for, such as its poor personalized recommendations, marketing functions is too simple. A successful social networking can drive sales of products, but a social networking product that is designed for sales is another matter entirely. Well one thing is to be targeted, a fish to eat such a thing is able to do in business.

Product has grown too specialized

In a music-themed social networking cannot maximize the use of existing Apple customers. Not all Apple users are all interested in music social networking, and social platforms like Facebook and Twitter also have music social networking elements, which made it difficult for Ping gathering vast proportions, and scale is the lifeblood of the social network. There is also a problem is that Ping Facebook support is missing. However, it can't be denied that Apple has big effect on various aspects. For example, because of its hot products, many periphery products rise in response to the proper time and conditions, such as cute iphone cases, leather iphone cases, stylish iphone cases, unique iphone cases and so on.

In the era of Steve jobs, Apple is a company that owns innovative product raise reputation spread. Apple does not need a social network approach to maintaining fan loyalty. Ping's experience tells us that consumers may be Steve Jobs's reality distortion effect for a long time, but they are a real group of wise men, if magic is no longer, they fear, is also needed to maintain in a certain way.

Social networking is a big thing, if you do really well, you need from management down to the operations team has invested a great deal of effort and cost. As the core of a hardware-company, it is difficult for Apple social distraction, invest too much energy. Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple would not invest too much energy on social networking, but more inclined to like Facebook, Twitter and third parties conducted in-depth cooperation. According to the New York Times News, Twitter Apple intends to be a strategic investment, in recent months the two sides have been negotiating.

For Apple, whether it is not a do social networking by yourself, this is an unavoidable and important direction. This may relate to the future of Apple and Google, Facebook, Amazon the ultimate competition heavyweight. It is hard to tell Apple to abandon social networks are right or wrong, but sometimes face the trend is something you want to stick to their beliefs, which is why Steve jobs left Apple's greatest asset, business is like this.