Social Media

Ping Copies iLike’s Sidebar; Partovi Hopes They Copy Their Mission Of Empowering Artists Too

image from socialmediaseo.net Over the weekend Ping received a much needed update that included a sidebar. Early accounts noted how similar that the sidebar seemed to be to a feature that the social music discovery site iLike offers.  Hint: They're indistinguishable from each other. Ali Partovi, the co-founder of iLike, had the same thoughts and shared his sentiments with TechCrunch:

"I just hope Apple also copies iLike’s mission of democratizing music by empowering artists, especially the little guys. With Ping’s restrictions so far on artist signup, the major labels are the winners, not artists, and that breaks my heart.”

According to Toby Shapshak at Times Live, when he checked out the relevance of the recommendations that Ping made; he was underwhelmed. It recommended that he should follow: "Katy Perry, Usher, Taylor Swift, Lady GaGa and Ke$ha."

MG Siegler at TechCruch argues that this is Ping's most troubling shortcoming. "The service," he writes, "is dominated by big-name artists from huge labels."

As Partovi once said in an interview with me, "Fans want more diversity; they want the mass-appeal stuff, but they also want more variety that fits their tastes."

One can only hope that Partovi is right—that along with seemingly copying iLike's sidebar—Apple will also consider taking with it their philosophy about artists with them and attempt to empower more than those who are major label represented.

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