In case you’ve been asleep the last two days, Apple just jumped into the social networking game with Ping, a service that’s integrated with iTunes 10. The big mystery is whether or not Ping will be a Myspace killer. And Mypace has been like a zombie.

Most artists want to know if it’s a waste of time to set up another profile on yet another social network, and the short answer to that is, no. While Ping is far from perfect, my opinion is that it has the potential to be a great tool for how people will discover your music.

One major problem with Ping right now is that it’s hard to find anybody to connect with. This sucks for a network that’s supposed to be social. There’s no way to import your email address book or find your Facebook friends right now. Ping had Facebook integration when it launched but it was later removed. It’s rumored that Steve Jobs and the peeps at Facebook still got some shit to work out. Anyway, I have no doubt that once the smoke clears, these issues will be corrected. I did however get my first and only follower today, Funktransplant Superdeluxx. I figure I was only followed because I have Funk in my user name. oh well…

Also, theres no way to set up an artist page at the moment. The ones that exist on the service only exist for a few major label artists like Lady Ga Ga and U2. You can set up a basic user profile and follow a few artists that Ping recommends for you but it’s easy to see that this service is still in development.

I guess so far I’ve been doing a poor job of giving you a reason to bother with it, but here’s what Ping will bring to the game; a useful social center for you to connect with your fans and have them purchase your music. Myspace is still standing because no one has yet to build a successful platform that combines internet social networking with a marketplace for musicians.

Sites like bandcamp are great but unless someone starts out a fan, they are not likely to find your page. Facebook fan pages don’t do much either with helping you discover new music. Ping could be great at this. My thinking is that music blog owners like myself and others will be able to take part in a community and share music we’ve discovered with with people who are already engaged to buy music. Ping is promising but it will be useless if artists dont participate.

If you’re there and you’re looking for someone to follow who will follow you back; my username is Funk Worm.

I wrote this post fairly quickly so excuse any misspellings or errors…I’ll keep you updated!

You may also like: