Despite being plagued by spammers and other would-be fraudsters, Apple said before the start of this weekend that its Ping social network is off to rock-star kind of start. Within 48-hours of launch, Ping has already generated better than one million initial users. Not bad for something a lot of folks were skeptical about only 72-hours ago.

Apple was beyond enthused to announce the gangbusters success on Friday. "One-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping," said an Apple rep in a press release, hinting that further exponential growth is anticipated in the weeks ahead as iTunes 10 becomes the "norm."

Many analysts, however, agree that for Ping to take full advantage of the 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries, Apple will have to do something about the runaway spammers, con-artists, fake celebrity profiles, and other less-than-savory characters who are now populating Ping at an alarmingly accelerated pace. For the time being, Ping is "drowning in scams and spams," as Sophos security researcher Chester Wisniewski commented late in the week.

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