The latest innovation from iTunes launched this week. Ping was supposed to revolutionize the music experience. Reviews, however, were tepid. The “social network for music” as Apple promotion called it turned out to be less social than existing networks and not integrated with them, a rather serious miscalculation. It’s possible they rushed the launch to coincide with the iPod re-launch and it will improve, but for the moment, the sizzle just ain’t there.
Everybody’s trying to find the next big thing (remember Google’s Wave and Buzz? Nah, I didn’t think so), but the virtual landscape is getting littered with the bones of a whole lot of misguided attempts to be “the next _______” when that’s really not what we need.
It’s a business kind of outlook (and how well has that served the world lately) that seeks to dislodge a successful product by creating another version of the same with NEW and IMPROVED written across the package.  It’s Coke and Pepsi thinking.  While slow moving organizations decide how to cope with the digital revolution that’s already here, most people are just looking for fun…