• NPR, Wednesday, December 22, 2010 1:40 PM

Ouch. Ping, Apple's iTunes-focused "social network," just made NPR's list of "Worst Ideas of 2010." Citing a report in Mashable, NPR's music news blog The Record notes: "The day Steve Jobs [announced Ping], tech writers began sounding the death knell for MySpace." Why has Apple's social play so far failed to take off? Simply, "Apple doesn't like sharing, thus, it is difficult for them to build a social network," The Record explains. "The most popular services -- the Facebooks, Twitters and MySpaces of the world -- allow users to share links, thoughts, ideas, photos and music to connect with each other." But because Ping hinges on iTunes, which The Record calls "a self-contained fortress," it doesn't stand a chance.

Adding insult to injury, The Record wants to know how Apple could launch a music-based social networking site in September, but only introduce a way to swap playlists four months later. "Considering how important playlists are to the organization of a healthy music collection, one would imagine that type of functionality would have been ready at launch."

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