(Image courtesy of TechCrunch)
Apple issued a rare weekend update to iTunes, and if you happen to be one of the few, the proud who actually use Ping, you’ll want to pay attention: They just made the social networking service much, much better.
TechCrunch is reporting that what appears to be a very minor update to iTunes (10.0.1, not even a full point number!) actually makes the new PIng social networking service “at least a thousand times better.” That’s because you can finally use the service with your own music library, rather than only sharing songs that exist only on the iTunes Store.
“Now when you load this iTunes, you’ll see a Ping button next to every song you own when it’s highlighted in your library,” explains TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. “Clicking this button reveals a drop-down menu which gives you the option to Like a song, Post a song (put it in your Ping stream with a note), or see that artist’s profile on Ping.”
It’s not all wine and roses, however -- if your musical tastes tend to lean toward the obscure, Ping probably still isn’t for you. That’s because the service needs to access the title data from iTunes, and if a particular track isn’t sold there, you’ll get the unhelpful error message “That Item Could Not Be Found: You cannot like or post to Ping about an item that is not currently offered in the iTunes Store.” Hrumph.
The most obvious Ping-related feature of iTunes 10.0.1 is a new sidebar which opens on the right-hand side by default, giving you the option to Like or Post any song currently highlighted in your library. It also shows your Ping stream activity without having to actually go into the Ping section of iTunes, and also allows you to comment or Like anything in the stream. Of course, you can hide the sidebar by clicking a button in the bottom-right corner.
Ping is still missing some pretty major features, including integration with the outside world (or at least, Facebook and Twitter), and the Ping experience on iOS is still slow as molasses -- but at least it’s a start, and a good sign that Apple intends to keep hammering away at the service with future updates.
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