Apple released an updated version of iTunes yesterday fixing a few bugs and glitches but most importantly making its musical social network Ping a lot more user friendly. iTunes 10.0.1 has brought Ping right in to your music library with a Ping button in front of every song you own and a sidebar that lets you view updates from artists and friends you follow without leaving your library.
Clicking on the Ping button next to a song now reveals a drop down menu which gives you the option to ‘Like’ and ‘Post’ a song or see that artist’s profile on Ping. You also have the option to find the artist, song, album, or genre in the iTunes Store from this menu. If you use the Ping options in this drop down, you can socially share any track you’re actually listening to with the click of a button and it will appear in your Ping stream for all your friends to see.
These options will certainly boost user activity as it’s now possible to access Ping from one’s music collection whereas previously users needed to sign in to Ping separately and they could only share music by hunting down a song from the iTunes store even if they had it in their own library. This didn’t make any sense and users reported not using Ping after their initial curiosity about the new network died down.
What Ping still lacks is Facebbok and Twitter integration which is a major hindrance in increasing its user base. Facebook support was available for about 24 hours when Ping launched but disappeared soon after and hasn’t returned to date.
The update has also fixed a crash bug and two visual performance glitches in the system and now Game Centre apps have a badge in the App Store. The changes are small but in Ping’s case, they are going to go a long way in winning users back.
Download iTunes 10 for Windows and Mac
[via Mashable]
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