Semi-unimpressed with Apple Ping

Apple is a product company, evolving into a lifestyle company, now blazing a trail into social networking with its Ping announcement today.

I’m immediately skeptical. It’s just my nature.

Some thoughts before we’re able to install iTunes 10 and get to check it out:

1. Ping is a dumb name. It’s primarily a golf brand and a technical word for data notification. It’s un-ownable in Google and not worth trademarking.
2. Will this turn into yet another place for music marketers to sock puppet artists and astroturf fake fans and comments?
3. Where’s the WordPress plug-in for music bloggers? The html badge I can put in my sidebar?
4. But what if my music isn’t played through iTunes? Unsharable? I still spin a lot of CDs, plus I download so much music every week, it’s not even worth importing it all and indexing it.
5. Will this work with non-iTunes players? Windows Media Player and Quicktime? How about other musical socnet scrapers like MOG? Last.fm?
6. CDs: it would rock if Ping worked with Microsoft Sync to glean and share what CDs I spin in my car. Now that would be cool. How about what songs I “like” on the radio?
7. What tools will local bands with zero budget have at their disposal to leverage this new service?
8. Partnering with Live Nation and TicketBastard will only increase the horribleness and evil those companies wreak on the industry.
9. Can the RIAA access Apple’s growing user records to snoop for stolen music? How long until the first lawsuit?