So Long To Apple’s Music Social Network: Ping, We Hardly Knew Ye
Ping was scheduled for unceremonious termination at the end of September, and now it’s definitely gone dark. Clicking on the Ping link in the iTunes sidebar now returns an error, if it even still appears there. Our own Josh Constine foretold its demise back in September, and now it’s gone, both on mobile and the desktop.
Here’s the thing about Ping: it probably won’t be missed. The social networking effort from Apple got off to a rough start, amid problems with Facebook integration, and it didn’t get much better from there. There was hope it would be revived thanks to some social help from Twitter, but that didn’t come to pass. People just didn’t seem interested in participating in a social network that lived only inside of iTunes itself, and that essentially operated as a thinly veiled promotional machine for iTunes music content.
It’s not surprising that it’s gone, only that it took this long, really.
Read this article: So Long To Apple’s Music Social Network: Ping, We Hardly Knew Ye
One Month After Selling To Microsoft For $1.2B, Yammer CEO Predicts End Of Silicon Valley
There is a pretty fascinating debate happening right now on David Sacks’ Facebook page. Exactly one month after the Yammer sale to Microsoft closed, Sacks is feeling pretty bearish about the startup ecosystem.
“I think Silicon Valley as we know it may be coming to an end …,” Sacks posts, arguing mainly that because major Internet companies (like um, Microsoft?) are on the prowl for innovative ideas, it’s too risky and costly for entrepreneurs to attempt to create successful new companies.
“How many [viable] ideas like that are left?” Sacks, who was a TechCrunch50 winner, asks?
“An infinite number — human creativity is limitless,” responds the infinitely more positive Marc Andreessen, “Which doesn’t make it easy, but does mean the opportunity is unending.”
Andreessen then refutes Sacks’ argument point by point, basically asserting that larger companies are in many cases more ill-equipped than startups to execute on novel and world-changing ideas (Apple Ping anyone?), as they care more about stability than change.
Andreessen, who watched his own Netscape get crushed by Microsoft in the mid-nineties 1990s (and then lived to sell Skype to the beast of Redmond as A16z’s first exit) mind you, wins this round, by sheer enthusiasm.
He goes on a comment tear, and “successfully bludgeon[s] his audience into submission” three times! Sorry Sacks, but if Marc can muster up some hope, then so can you.
Also, I for one am a huge fan of Yammer investor George Zachary’s mystical response, “As long as the universe keeps changing, there is opportunity.” And a time to every purpose, under heaven.
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Some Dissatisfied Wireless Customers Leave A Complaint, Others Do This…
We’ve all had our moments of rage when dealing with wireless providers. It’s a difficult relationship. We need our phones in a way that makes us far more dependent than any human should be on a large corporation, and because of this, carriers are able to take advantage of our desperation.
Now, I’m not saying that’s the case with this poor gentleman at a T-Mobile store in Manchester, England. But for whatever reason, he’s displaying more rage than I’ve ever seen out of a dissatisfied customer. Obviously, it doesn’t work out too well for him in the end as police officers (Bobbys?) whisk him away in cuffs after his short-lived performance.
The man spares nothing in his quest to tear apart the T-Mobile UK store. He rips displays off the wall, tears down posters, and uses a fire extinguisher to trash whatever’s left. It’s quite the temper tantrum, so if you’ve been feeling negatively toward your wireless carrier this is the video that will let you vicariously live out your desires.
Enjoy!
[via PhoneArena]
Continued here: Some Dissatisfied Wireless Customers Leave A Complaint, Others Do This…