The move comes just days after Apple launched its new product-based social networking service Ping in iTunes. Now Netflix admits the community aspects of their site were hardly used and their engineering resources would be better spent devoted to developing aspects of the site that are highly popular – such as video streaming. Whether Netflix’s poor experience blending products, services, and social interaction will bode unwell for Ping remains to be seen.

Netflix’s community features allowed users to recommend films and TV shows to one another, follow their friends’ activities and reviews, and even view each other’s rental and streaming queues. The latter was an unpopular feature for many who didn’t want their more questionable tastes to be exposed to other users. (Ping also offers this feature; the ability to display your purchases and favorites to others is optional.)

Steve Swasey, vice president of corporate communications for Netflix, explained to Investor’s Business Daily simply that social networking on Netflix “was a feature that never really took off”.

There does appear to be backlash within the Netflix user base. Interestingly, the error message one receives when attempting to access community features explains that most community features have been disabled. (Access to and editing your own profile and reviews remain.) Could be it they will reinstate the features that users complain about losing the most?

Ping, not to be confused with social network updating service Ping.fm (or the web site Ping.com, which has nothing to do with music or social media whatsoever), is Apple’s new niche social networking service dedicated to connecting people based on their tastes in music. Ping is not a standalone web site; it comes packaged only with the software, which is available for both PC and Mac.

Interestingly, Ping is disabled by default and is therefore an opt-in user experience. One might think that Apple would be pushing for users to try the free service, but Apple is promoting social interaction by making users’ details such as name and hometown visible to the public unless specifically set to private. Furthermore, the types of music you enjoy, based on your iTunes statistics, can be hidden – so that embarrassing fetish for show tunes need not be known to the world.

The Facebook and Twitter of Music

ReadWriteWeb explains that Ping operates similarly to Facebook in that it allows users to rate and comment on music (a la Facebook’s “like” feature), and also contains features familiar to Twitter users, such as following other users and music artists to track their activities.

Steve Jobs recently admitted the inspiration behind Ping, stating the social service is “Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes. But it’s not Facebook, it’s not Twitter. It’s a social network all about music”.

The entire purpose of Ping is not entirely clear. Whether it’s a ploy to drive people to purchase more music from iTunes – as they see the music discussed by the people they’re following, or recommended by Ping itself – or a genuine attempt at bringing people together will be carefully watched over time.

A Work in Progress

Ping’s hardly perfected, and one of the biggest flaws mentioned in numerous reviews is the lack of the “genius” mode of music recommendations. Ping will instead recommend music that is most popular on the site – so if you’re a fan of indie music, be prepared to be recommended Lady Gaga and other wildly popular artists, simply because they’re buzzing on Ping and iTunes.

Users might also find it difficult to locate their friends as there appears to be a delay between when someone signs up for Ping and when he/she appears in the Ping search results. Users can invite their friends to Ping, but this is a fairly clunky way of making connections.

The Fate of MySpace Music?

Does Ping spell the end of MySpace Music? MySpace users tend to flock to artist pages to get the latest news and listen to music posted on their profiles. When they want to purchase new music, they’re linked to iTunes. With Ping, this is all possible from within the iTunes Ping interface, eliminating the need for third party involvement for iTunes purchases. (Alternatively, MySpace still offers the ability to buy via Amazon MP3.) What this means for one of MySpace’s most popular features, and arguably a major reason anyone remains at what has long been considered a withering social network, we can only speculate.

Is Convenience or Contrivance King?

The convenience of accessing a social network from within a piece of software people commonly use is apparent. The contrivance of a social network based largely around selling music may turn more cynical users off the service altogether. Ping is still a work in progress, and its overall success very much remains to be seen.

Instead of ignoring the problem (something a few other platforms do) Tumblr has decided to skip the “requotes” and credit the original author instead.

Starting today, reblogging will no longer insert attribution into the content/caption of the post except to quote content added by the parent post.

This means we’re no longer cluttering up post content with reblog attribution. But where did it go? The Dashboard already attributes reblogs’ parent blogs, and now it automatically attributes the source blog clearly and consistently[.] (Tumblr Staff Blog)

Another benefit of Tumblr’s new approach to reblogging is that sites outside of Tumblr (or at least those credited within a post) receive proper attribution and attention minus the reblog distractions.

Tumblr’s approach is similar in many ways to Twitter’s native retweet, who made a similar move in November of 2009.

Unlike the twitterverse however, Tumblr’s new approach is receiving praise from the community (minus a few disgruntaled souls of course), and it will be interesting to see if other platforms copy Tumblr’s new approach to reblogging in the not so distant future.

(Image Credit: Tumblr Staff)

Vox has been a fun place to explore, create and connect with your friends. But Vox is closing its doors on September 30, 2010.

This doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to your blog. We want you to make sure you can keep the great content you’ve shared on Vox, and continue to have a home for your blog. To help you make the transition off of Vox, we’ve added new export features that make it easy to move your blog to a free TypePad account, and your photos & videos to Flickr. (Official Vox Blog)

The few passionate users of the service are not thrilled with the news (as one can tell by the comment section) and many are already reporting errors when it comes to migrating to Typepad and Flickr.

Users of Vox probably need a premium service of Typepad or Flickr in order to transport all of their media content or consider migrating to free platforms like WordPress or Posterous (which Six Apart to their credit also mentions).

While news of the site’s shut down comes as no surprise (as not many people were apparently on Vox), Michael Arrington is reporting of rumors about a merger between Six Apart and VideoEgg.

Rumors of a Six Apart acquisition began swirling yesterday. Our sources suggest that Six Apart and VideoEgg will merge and that Six Apart will come away with 25% of the new company. [...]

Says a source, “Six Apart is hosed, so they are screwing [VideoEgg] by making them buy Six Apart – and [thereby] diluting [VideoEgg] shareholders.” (Business Insider)

If true, this would be bad news for Six Apart’s investors, especially since the company recently purchased NaturalPath Media in June.

While Six Apart has yet to show any signs of joining Vox on the endangered species list (as the company “looks” profitable), hopefully the team can put some new life into both Typepad and Movabletype (the latter which could potentially challenge WordPress).

The move is a smart one by Facebook, by doing so they can proactively fight back against spammers who steal accounts and then use the good names of those Facebook users to sell their products and phish for other users data.

Trusted source spamming has become a huge problem for Facebook as thousands of accounts have been compromised over the months, causing an uproar among Facebook users and security specialists. I reported last week about a Free iPad scam that hit the site while stealing personal information from users and that was just one of many examples.

A less nefarious reason for the program is also provided, since users who have forgotten to log out at public computers, such as coffee shops and internet cafes can now complete the logout process from any other location of their choosing.

The new feature is being slowly rolled out to users and can be found in the Account Settings section under the “Account Security” section.

Hopefully the spammers don’t create another automated system to keep legitimate users out of their own accounts as they wreak havoc on their friends list.

Twitter for iPad takes advantage of the iPad’s fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly – without needing to open and close windows or click buttons. [...]

When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline. And, let’s be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen. [sic] (Official Twitter Blog)

Although the official iPad is receiving glowing reviews from around the twittersphere (not to mention the blogosphere as well), Twitter’s iPad app will probably not cause a mass extinction of the “few” tweet iPad apps in the app store.

Third party developers will probably respond to Twitter’s official presence by integrating other social networks, a trend we have seen on the iPhone as well as other smartphones.

While Twitter’s official presence will place some iPad tweet apps on the endangered species list, as long as tweet developers are able to out-innovate Twitter, then they should be able to fend off their own demise.

While the program offers basic items, such as “Best Cup” for cups of coffee, it also features some wacky options like “My Happy Place” and “Guilty Pleasure” along with “Celebrity Sightings” and even “Hitched” in case you decide to tie the not in a drunken night in Las Vegas.

Highlights is available for immediate use and allows you to add your own and view friends highlights from the Gowalla website.

The Gowalla team has also promised that the mobile versions of their program for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry will also soon receive the option.

Gowalla hopes the new feature will allow you to learn interesting facts about your friends, perhaps a friend also has the same happy place as you or enjoys the same cup of coffee.

Actually that last one could be great if you plan on asking a friend out for coffee at a later date…perhaps this whole highlights option will take off.

What do you think about Gowalla Highlights, I’d be interested to see the interesting way you might use this new feature.

Although cheaper alternatives are available, very few match the backup frequency of VaultPress, save one which is blogVault.

Created by Inactiv Media Solutions, blogVault offers users an inexpensive hassle free way to back up their blog without breaking the bank.

With prices starting at $29/year, blogVault looks like a strong contender to many of the premium backup services available to WordPress.

BlogVault also does not require users to create an account with Amazon first, which means bloggers can focus on blogging rather than maintaining separate billing accounts.

For those of you who might consider blogVault as a “poor man’s VaultPress,” here is an in depth view from someone who is using both services.

Where blogVault Wins

Although blogVault does not backup your blog instantly like VaultPress, you can have the service conduct hourly backups of your site, as well as daily or even weekly (for those of you concerned about server spikes).

You can also select which files you want blogVault to backup, which might appeal to users interested in only protecting select portions of their blog.

BlogVault also has an automatic restore feature for you to test the site out, which is a feature that VaultPress has yet to implement on their site (although  the latter is planning on releasing this feature in the future).

As far as pricing goes, blogVault is overall much more affordable, with costs ranging from $29/year (for one blog with 1 GB of storage) to $249/year (for 15 blogs with 15 GB’s of storage).

Users can even demo test the service out freely for the first month (although blogVault will only backup to 50mb of your site).

Where VaultPress Wins

Although VaultPress’s smaller rival does provide hourly backups, it unfortunately is no match for Automattic’s live backup service which instantly backs up your blog as soon as you make any changes.

VaultPress also doesn’t rely solely upon Amazon’s S3 servers in order to back up your site, as they also utilizes their own WordPress servers (spread out across the United States) as well as a secret location (which this author refers to as “Space Mountain”).

Automattic also does not have cap limits on how much you can backup, so whether your blog is 100 mb or 100 GB’s, they will back up your site for the same “all you can eat” price.

Even better, the price does not increase over time, which means that in the future you can pay the same rate without having to worry about whether you should outsource your images, videos or audio files.

Last but not least VaultPress has a security feature which means that you can receive the same (if not similar) protection for your WordPress blog as the folks who receive WordPress VIP hosting.

Which Is Better?

If you have a personal blog and do not update your site frequently, then blogVault is probably the better option for you.

However if you use a blog for professional reasons (either as a business or for a charity), then you should choose VaultPress as an option (especially if your site is prone to hacking).

Currently I have VaultPress backing up two of my blogs (one personal, another professional), and blogVault protecting a third site.

While the former is definitely much more expensive, I have yet to find any company matching VaultPress features across any blogging platform (so it looks like I’ll be sporting WP for awhile).

Although I would encourage readers to take a hard look at VaultPress, if the service is beyond your budget you should consider blogVault as an alternative (unless you’re a super geek and prefer to do it yourself).

Unfortunately the new feature is not yet ready for prime time, although Disqus is asking for a few brave blog volunteers to help them work out the bugs in the system.

If Disqus is working well for you, we’d like Analytics to show you in what way. If your site’s community is lackluster, we’d like Analytics to help discover why. We’re able to see an incredible amount of data from the half a million communities powered by Disqus; we can see what works and what doesn’t on a broad level. [...]

Want to help us test and improve Disqus Analytics? We’re now looking for alpha testers. No, not just early-adopting beta testers — we’re looking for people willing to bang on an early product and give us regular feedback. (Official Disqus Blog)

As seen in the video below, Disqus Analytics would help bloggers understand who exactly is commenting, as well as highlight which social network (or site) is sending them the most traffic.

Despite the fierce competition from rivals and blog platforms, the Disqus team continues to innovate at break neck speeds, having previously released Avatar like buttons and announcing plans of an iPhone app.

Although Disqus Analytics is probably still months away from a public release, this tool should give the Disqus an advantage over WordPress’s IntenseDebate, as well as convince even more bloggers to outsource their comment section.