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Comment by powrtoch | Hacker News Reader

Anyone care to take bets on this "Ping" feature? I just can't see it taking off, but it could just be that I hang out in the wrong crowds.

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I've never known anybody that actually likes iTunes. They use it begrudgingly. I don't see why anyone would want to spend more time in it.

There's quite a few people who use iPhones/iPod Touches, though.

I do like iTunes. I even used it as my music player on Windows when I was still using that OS.

Personally I love iTunes, but I have heard it's less impressive on Windows systems. The only other legitimate complaint I know is that it's become bloated with features that not every user needs (if you don't have an iSomething, for example).

I use iTunes for playing music when I'm using my Apple computers. I suppose, I neither like it nor dislike it. It sits there playing music. It's not something I consciouslly "use" all that much.

I'll take that bet. 160M accounts solves the "get traction" problem of most social networks. Once you get outside of the geek community, people love iTunes.

I take this back. I have played with "ping" for a few days and it is bad. It feels like a "minimum viable product" where they forgot the "viable" bit.

I'm going to bet that most of my fellow betters are about as far off in their predictions as all the people saying "Who actuall wants a giant iPad Touch?" a few months ago.

A potential big threat for Twitter as it's a much richer way of following musicians - and if video content on iTunes starts to take off then also actors etc.

Seems like they can give Last.fm a run for their money.

First thought through my mind when Ping was announced was "MySpace is definitely doomed"

I think it's been doomed for a few years now, really. Steve even neglected to mention MySpace in his presentation -- he compared Ping to Facebook and Twitter.

Maybe it's just me, but I've almost completely forgotten about MySpace when I think "social networks".

Apple generally has really good perspective about what people want, but it seems to me that they often really miss the mark with iTunes. For instance, it drives my partner up the wall that she can't search iBooks in iTunes.

Ping sounds like a miss to me, and there have been a lot of itunes features over the years that have fallen flat.

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