Disruptive Conversations

With the announcement of Apple's Ping "social network for music" yesterday, I naturally had to download iTunes 10 and check it out.  Outside of finding that so far pretty much zero of the older artists I follow are on Ping, I was intrigued by this screen:

Others have noticed this, of course, and a Cult of Mac article about it has comments from folks who were able to link to Facebook to see if their FB friends are on Ping.

It's just curious, given the lack of Facebook mention in Steve Jobs' keynote yesterday and then Kara Swisher's All Things D article:  'Steve Jobs on Why Facebook Is Not Part of Apple’s New Ping Music Social Network: “Onerous Terms”' (And I'm somehow not surprised that Facebook had "onerous terms"...)

It would be logical if they did allow that connection... it's annoying to enter a new social network and have to, yet again, go through the process of connecting to people on the network.  This is why data portability matters, as I've written about over the years, and why we need projects like the DataPortability Project to succeed.  Upon entering a new network like Ping, I want to connect with my "tribe" very simply and easily...

Meanwhile, given that the bands I like, such as the Scorpions, AC/DC, Rush, etc., (or even Nickelback!) all don't seem to be on Ping yet, I'll just look at my blank page and wait for a few friends to show up on the service... perhaps I can find some newer music ;-)