I guess all good things really do come to an end. Looks like Seesmic is moving forward and leaving Ping.Fm as we know it behind. I discovered the plans for sunset when my Ping.Fm wouldn’t reconnect to my Facebook Pages. Sadly, Seesmic is no longer offering support.  It will be interesting to see what good actually comes of it. I initially thought Seesmic buying Ping.FM was a good thing. Seeing the latest incarnation of Seesmic Ping makes me wonder because it is no where near what Ping.FM is. And the note on the Ping.FM website that says “try Seesmic Ping for free” leads me to believe a future release will be pay for use and all free versions will also be sunset.  While Seesmic says they are being more focused, it really seems like they have lost the consumer focus. Business is business, and most succeed better/faster when they listen to their core users. The Ping.FM founders listened to their users and grew into a leading social media tool. If core users are asking for something different, so be it. I consider myself a (former) core user, and have not been asking for more. I will continue watch what Seesmic does with Ping.FM, but my hopes are not very high. There really was not a whole lot more to improve with Ping.FM. The only thing I saw a need for was scheduling, but that came from other services that incorporated Ping.FM into their core.  I think one reason for the changes is that major competitors to Seesmic such as HootSuite and SocialOomph, integrate Ping.FM. When Seemic sunsets Ping.FM, these services will eventually have to remove Ping.FM as it deteriorates in capability. Seesmic will try to capitalize on this and have users move to Seesmic to get the former Ping.FM functionality. Maybe Hootsuite, SocialOomph and others that offer Ping.FM will partner with or develop an alternative. Maybe Seesmic will surprise me! 

Quotes:

Seesmic Help Desk

    • In the meantime, we are coordinating the sunset of Seesmic Web, Seesmic Desktop 2, Seesmic iPhone, Ping.fm along with a couple of our Seesmic Ping applications (Seesmic Ping on WP7 and Desktop Mac OS X). Consequently, we won’t support these products anymore – this is why you cannot see them in Zendesk.

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