iTunes Ping is a great idea in my humble opinion. I love both technology and music and using technology to share music can be very powerful. The problem with iTunes Ping is right now it's so limited. I hate to be critical just a few days after launch, but it's extremely bare bones. I feel like I'm in a large, but private beta. There isn't really much to do. Yes, I find myself spending a bit more time in iTunes and yes, I do check Ping frequently but I find myself leaving Ping after maybe five or ten minutes. There really isn't much to do unless you are following a ton of people or a ton of people are following you. I would be following more, but Facebook Connect was ripped out of Ping for API usage issues. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.

Seriously, can we go back to Ping being limited for a moment? That's one of the main problems. Why are we just limited to sharing music? iTunes is so much more than that. It's movies, TV shows, applications, podcasts, and a ton more. Status updates would be a huge plus too. Out of the box Ping should be able to share all of this with friends. Not only that, but share it on Facebook and Twitter as well. Sharing content from external sites on Facebook and Twitter is an easy win-win situation on both ends. For the user, more people are able to see their activity because more people are on Facebook and Twitter. With more people, there's more awareness of iTunes Ping and ultimately a huge benefit for Apple.

The most recent problem with Ping is -- you guessed it -- spam and fraud. It's laughably easy to disguise yourself as somebody else. I know there's currently a few Mark Zuckerbergs and ten or more Steve Jobs. Plus, anytime anyone with a large following posts anything, they'll be greeted with spam. Apple should have known this would be a problem from the start. There's no easy way to quickly flag a comment as spam. You can report an individual activity post and then choose spam and explain yourself, but who actually wants to go through all that?

Hopefully Apple will quickly address all these issues in iTunes Ping beta. Without some key improvements, Ping simply will not thrive as planned.