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Ping punked... Apple's social media/music site near collapse from spam & other probs


blue2blue

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[EDIT: FWIW, I created a profile and poked around Ping a little later in the day and while it was very slow (response times on database interactions were from 15 to 45 seconds or so in some cases) I didn't see any overt signs of collapse, so I think the headline was a bit of an overstatement, although who knows how bad things were earlier or what all was going on behind the scenes.]

 

 

Apple's foray into social music is not going well as its Ping service is experiencing
a multitude of problems
, including comment spam, a
lack of promised functionality
, and generally
inconsistent user experience
.


Security researcher Chet Wisniewski at Sophos said
Apple is not employing any type of spam or URL filtering
, as comments such as those advertising "free iPhones" were already appearing some 24 hours after the site's launch. He also said that
Apple has made it easy for those to abuse the service
.


"No credit card or other positive identification is required to participate," he pointed out in a blog post. Without this, a user could create accounts easily simply by creating a bogus iTunes account which in turn would allow a bogus Ping account to be created.


Ping is also suffering from a case of
overpromising
and
underdelivering
, apparently. In his presentation on Wednesday,
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the service would tie in with Facebook
in order to assist in music discovery and finding friends to follow.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Ping-off-to-a-rocky-start-as-spam-issues-plague-service/1283542490

 

 

Unfortunately for Apple, Facebook is currently saying, no way...

 

 

[...]
Facebook Zings Ping


The Facebook
that let other services, such as Ping, search for friends on the social networking giant's site are normally open unless other services expect to make heavy use of them. If they do, they have to sign an agreement with Facebook.



The first round of negotiations between Apple and Facebook fell through because Cupertino found Facebook's demands onerous
, AllThingsD reported.


However,
the Ping site continued to let subscribers search for friends on Facebook until Cupertino was denied access
to the social networking giant's APIs.



Apple and Facebook have resumed talks on letting Ping subscribers find their friends on Facebook, AllThingsD reported.


Fear and Loathing


Perhaps Facebook's "onerous" demands were
based on fears about a new influx of spam from the Ping service
. Prior to Ping's launch, Facebook had been hit by a wave of Apple-related spam, Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant,
. Often, the attacks will post bogus messages on the victim's Wall advertising free iPads or iPhones.


"Facebook is definitely having huge challenges fighting the spam and scams," Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, pointed out. "It's looking closely at every link that comes into its service to see if it has malicious content. At this point
anything that might introduce more nightmares to Facebook isn't welcome
."


That fear, if it exists, is perhaps well founded --
within 24 hours of its launch on Wednesday, Ping was hit by a wave of comment spam
.


http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Can-Spam-Swamped-Ping-Survive-Without-Facebook-70759.html?wlc=1283547379

 

[bold added]

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Oh, it's even worse than that.

 

Apple is only allowing artist profiles on Ping by invite only. This means that while a user could follow Lady Gaga, they can't even find any of the thousands and thousands of indie artists on iTunes (like me, for instance) in Ping's search.

 

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't allowing more attention to be brought to us indies allow us to sell more music through iTunes, thereby giving Apple more money?

 

Verdict: massive social net fail, unless they start changing things mighty fast.

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More on the consensus -- which is far from magical...

 



[...]



Chester Wisniewski
, a blogger for security software vendor Sophos, chided Apple for not anticipating the spammers' assault on Ping:


"Most of the security industry has been pointing out the migration of spam from an email-only venture to blog/forum comments, Facebook, Twitter and other Web 2.0 platforms. But apparently Apple didn't consider this when designing Ping, as
the service implements no spam or URL filtering
. It is no big shock that less than 24 hours after launch,
Ping is drowning in scams and spams
," Wisniewski writes.



[...]


Bad Design: iTunes Sucks

Early glitches aside, many bloggers aren't thrilled with Ping's implementation, particularly the integration with iTunes.


PCWorld
's Jared Newman writes: "At least on my PC,
iTunes is an abomination
. I will avoid opening it when possible because of
how long it takes to load
and how chunky it feels to operate, and that's not going to change because of a social network. Also, people whose work computers don't have iTunes installed won't be able to use Ping for the great American pastime of slacking off at work."


Computerworld
's Jonny Evans, who
praised some of Ping's attributes
, also knocked its walled-off iTunes design: "That
lack of focus on the world beyond iTunes could be Apple's Achilles Heel
as it makes its best move yet into social networking...Without inclusion of content from the wider community, Ping will lack that visceral, addictive engagement 'stickiness' that characterizes other successful networks."


And
PCWorld
's Ian Paul made this somewhat
dire prediction
: "It's not all bad, but
if Ping doesn't improve soon this music-oriented social network will bomb faster than an American Idol wannabe
."


Just two days later, a cacophonous crowd of critics are carping about Ping's rampant spam, security holes, crippled Facebook integration, and overall poor design.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/204866/early_ping_reviews_strike_sour_note.html

 

[bold added]

 

Having only recently installed iTunes on one of my machines for the first time (I made my now seldom used laptop the sacrificial lamb), I'm hardly surprised by the negative comments about iTunes -- although they stand at odds to some of the glowing praise I've heard from some of my Apple-centric pals. I found iTunes to be, as noted above, bloated, clunky and generally a pain in the neck.

 

But it turns out that you have to use iTunes in order to get a podcast listed in iTunes's supposedly influential podcast listings.

 

Still, it's a hell of an unkindness to inflict on a poor little lappie that has served me so tirelessly and so well for over 6 years.

 

But... in for a penny, in for a pound... I'm thinking it's time to go see what Ping is all about... ;)

 

 

 

EDIT / PING MEMBERSHIP UPDATE:

 

Well... you can follow me on Ping under my user name TK Major... but don't expect to find me hanging out there. For one thing, there ain't much there there -- and for another it takes about 45 seconds for any sort of interaction to work through. (Updating your profile, picking music to display on your Ping profile page, etc). It's very bad. That will get fixed, of course. I mean... it will have to. Otherwise, I can't imagine anyone will stick around to do anything... I'm only there out of perverse curiosity born of my web dev guy compulsive need to check out anything new that seems like it could be significant.

 

It's a new site, of course, and Apple are claiming two million people signed up in the last four days (along with getting their new iTunes 10 update, as I just did). So, you know, victim of your own success, and all that. I guess that's why other companies tend to ramp up -- even if it doesn't get nearly as much free publicity as Apple's characteristic big bang releases and debuts out of sympathetic pop tech journos... That said, the ranks of the automatically Apple-adulatory among tech journos -- even pop tech journhos -- seems to have thinned dramatically in the last 6 months or so... Hope Apple was nice to the little people on the way up... I'm told you see the same folks on the way back... you know.

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I'm hardly surprised by the negative comments about iTunes -- although they stand at odds to some of the glowing praise I've heard from some of my Apple-centric pals. I found iTunes to be, as noted above, bloated, clunky and generally a pain in the neck.

 

I'm still fairly new to Windows; but after a half a year of almost daily Windows immersion, I'd much rather use MS Office on a PC and QuickTime on a Mac. If iTunes follows that pattern, then I wouldn't be surprised if it were significantly better on a Mac.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

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I'm still fairly new to Windows; but after a half a year of almost daily Windows immersion, I'd much rather use MS Office on a PC and QuickTime on a Mac. If iTunes follows that pattern, then I wouldn't be surprised if it were significantly better on a Mac.


Best,


Geoff

I certainly hope so. :D

 

FWIW, I've heard a not insignificant amount of praise of iTunes from some Windows users. (And I've known more than a couple Mac users who avoid it.)

 

Ping aside -- after all, four days in, it's really not entirely fair to pick it apart except to say that it's off to a really rocky start -- and has some utterly bizarre oversights (like the lack of protection from spambots -- that is just utterly nutty) -- I can't say that I'm all that much impressed by iTunes so far -- it (also) seems really slow in comparison to other software or Rhapsody, which is a fairly similar local player with attached store -- but, of course, also has on-demand subscription streaming, which is its real raison d'

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