This article has been just updated:
Navigating the social media scene can be tricky. With the many social media applications of today (Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.), knowing what to post and when to post it feels like a challenge. To do well online, people need to post on their socials, and do so often. Luckily, there are programs that specialize in (or specialized in) posting to all social networks from one platform. A notorious program that did that was Ping.fm – a social network service that has since been discontinued.
Ping.Fm is a social network site that was founded in 2008 by creators Adam Duffy, Ryan Merket, and Sean McCullough. The intent of the website was to make it possible to post to multiple social media networks, all at the same time. The service changed the way of social networking in the late 2000s, and made a mark in its four years around. The company allowed its users to write posts on their site, and then choose which social media accounts they wished to post on. They could filter out which posts went to which account all through the social network site. This service was particularly beneficial to companies who want to stay active on social media accounts, but don’t have the time to regularly check them. Ping.FM was a great website that set the scene of social networking for other companies.
Four short years after the initial launch of Ping.Fm, it was discontinued after being integrated into the company Seesmic. Seesmic itself was essentially a competitor of Ping.Fm that did the same exact thing. It started as a video streaming service, but changed its tune when it overtook Ping.Fm. Unfortunately for Seesmic and Ping.Fm another company had hopes to do the same thing: Hootesuite. When Hootesuite bought out Seesmic in 2012, Ping.Fm reign officially ended. However, the idea of a social media dashboard stuck with Hootesuite, with the website still being around today. The website really did defy the age of social media and technology, which is why there are so many competing social network dashboard websites today.
Nowadays, it’s not enough to have a website where users can post to all their socials; that’s too common. These websites need something else to stand out, and make themselves unique to customers. Many of these social networking dashboards have taken it upon themselves to help users with all aspects of social media. They can use websites like Hootesuite and others to track insights and trends, protect their brands, monitor what other users and brands are doing, and advertise across social media sites. Ping.fm defied social media in 2008, but in 2021, there the website has plenty of alternatives.
Since Ping.fm hasn’t been around for nearly 10 years, people have to rely on other websites to do their social media marketing and posting. Luckily, the world of social media has changed vastly, so there are plenty of options to suit each individual’s social media networking needs.
Ping.fm was a one of a kind website that many companies have synced modeled themselves after. The alternatives to Ping.fm would not be possible without the initial idea. The program of Ping.fm may have only lasted four years, but it has lived on in the multitude of other programs that have since been created. Ping.fm was unfortunately dissolved. The world was not ready for it in 2008. In 2021, companies just like it are thriving and continuously growing. Without its creation, none of them would be possible.
Overall, though Ping.fm’s social networking reign was short-lived, it has made a major impact for social media marketing. Other companies have been able to take Ping.fm’s initial “posting on multiple” platforms idea and make it better. It’s so much easier to post on social media accounts from one place. Anyone who needs help marketing posts, creating posts, and scheduling them should use any of the many Ping.fm alternatives. Hootesuite, Loomly, Metigy, Social Pilot, and all the others are just as great as Ping.fm once was.