Comments on: iLike’s Wonderful Facebook Problem

By: Do you need a marketing budget these days? « Ashok’s Blog

Do you need a marketing budget these days? « Ashok’s Blog — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:18:09 +0000

[...] grown to a reasonable size, with the introduction of their Facebook Application, they have grown exponentially. You may ask then, how are any of the current Facebook applications, or even MySpace widgets [...]

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By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:12:55 +0000

Wow. Thats amazing. I like the idea, though not a big music fan - so this app. isn’t for me.

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:59:50 +0000

Definitely impressive growth numbers. It seems like iLike is great for FB for two reasons: 1) cleaner alternative to the music aspect of MySpace, 2) iLike’s all about community as well. The challenge bit is a great idea.

Still, I feel like the music interface could use some help other than just “here’s what else my friends like”. Can we get some more specific recs? I like what launch and pandora do, and there’s the recommendations from apps like additune and stores like itunes, etc. What’s a better rec system? AI engine using everyone’s data, or just you looking at your friends’ data? I say the former. So really, this is more about page views than selling music. In that, I’d say FB and iLike groups are actually competing…

By: Firew

Firew — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:05:09 +0000

@Marc: 25% attrition rate? Where do you get that??

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:52:12 +0000

What strikes me is the attrition rate that’s north of 25% in such a short period of time. Please keep us apprised of when this thing flames out or rather dies a quiet death without much notice.

By: Danesc

Danesc — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:15:17 +0000

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By: Wes Mahler

Wes Mahler — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:04:34 +0000

i don’t see any problem here

By: Marcus

Marcus — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:36:58 +0000

facebook is growing fast, in general the future of communication is in control of the social mobile networks. Their growing past each one attaacts a different audience, peekamo hit their audience on a more persoanl level through text, facebook is hitting everyone through pics, groups. Networking is now a business itself.

By: Concrete Stain

Concrete Stain — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:53:15 +0000

we can all agree these are staggering stats; Congrats - RB

By: Ah Yer!

Ah Yer! — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:39:46 +0000

So this is what this Web 2.0 and Facebook hype is all about. A name-that-song game.

By: beyondwww

beyondwww — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:09:38 +0000

@ Alex you are the best!!!!

Well I think they should go non profits.

By: Aidan Henry

Aidan Henry — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:08:51 +0000

Wow… 8 million users in 9 months? Doesn’t seem like a problem to me I’m sure other start-ups would kill for numbers like that. But as others have mentioned, it will be interesting to watch revenues. My guess is that they’ll probably just try to get bought over - the typical web 2.0 revenue model, HA.

Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com

By: josh carrier

josh carrier — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:58:32 +0000

iLike would be good on FB, if it allowed UK users to make use of all the features, such as concert tagging.

By: Jay (living in First Life)

Jay (living in First Life) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:13:30 +0000

Revenue: 0
Future Revenue: 0
Value Added to the World: 0

Expenses: a lot - the licensing fees are huge

If internet radio is really in trouble, these guys have to be the top of the list.

By: homer

homer — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:16:52 +0000

mark stop is u naught, filthy rich bastard. You don’t need to showoff on TC! >:O

By: Wes

Wes — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 02:23:55 +0000

The stats look very impressive especially when they are starting to get more 600 sign ups per hour.

By: Pete Mauro

Pete Mauro — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:54:26 +0000

@alaska -

You are way off. Why don’t you re-read the post or better yet use the service before calling people stupid. The songs used in the game are 30 second samples and they can be licensed from someone like MUZE on different terms than you quoted.

By: Mick Liubinskas

Mick Liubinskas — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:52:34 +0000

The growth is great but the old adage of ‘easy come, easy go’ can be applied to see that it’s easier to get users through FB then to keep them. Even the fact that they say “users ever” suggests that they’ve lost users.

Regardless, they’re in a great position to build on this. The challenge is a great way to turn the copyright limit of 30 second previous into an advantage.

Revenue opportunities abound. A simple “Buy This Now” might be all they need. But it will come back to retention.

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:46:36 +0000

@Alaska - before you go insulting Doug, you might want to take a reading comprehension course.

The 80 songs / session comment is clearly in regards to the iLike Music Challenge, not in the average number of songs played. The iLike Music Challenge has a :30 second timer, so at max you’re talking about 40 minutes, not 4 hours. However, since the goal of the game is to respond as quickly as possible, most people are probably responding in under 10 seconds, which would mean that you’re generating 80 page views in around 13 minutes. I was at 3.4 seconds average response time before I uninstalled iLike on my facebook profile because my computer got kind of screwed by it.

Your 4 hour assessment is WAY off.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:45:10 +0000

I don’t think having two different sets of customers using varying products is particularly a problem. This situation almost reminds me of how companies have to manage markets in different countries - but in more of an internet way. Many companies have this issue where they have distinct groups of people with distinct behaviors. Ford in Europe makes completely different cars than are in the U.S., but they manage. Pizza Hut is actually a place people go to take a date in China; a drastically different experience than what you have in the U.S. So even though their basic service/market is the same (music et al), they have to serve two sets of users with a presumed small overlap.

But much like in the other examples I gave, this isn’t really a problem, just an additional challenge for a company that may have come prematurely. The real problem seems to be generating revenue. It would be interesting to see which population is more profitable.

By: bob cobb

bob cobb — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:44:39 +0000

It says right in the facebook apps page that they have that many users

By: Timothy Haroutunian

Timothy Haroutunian — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:42:28 +0000

I don’t know if those stats are accurate considering the fact that Facebook just published a blog post that said they have reached 30,000,000 (30 million) users. - source

However, I could be completely wrong.

By: Ez E

Ez E — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:33:27 +0000

This is a great post because it points to the core of where real innovation may start happening with the Facebook API.

By: Alaska Miller

Alaska Miller — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:30:02 +0000

@Dave

Do you really work at divshare? Cause if you do, I don’t think you would be so stupid.

80 “pageviews” for iLike at a outlandishly generous $11 CPM makes each users worth 88 cents.

80 songs * 3 minutes average = 4 HOURS!

They’re making less than a quarter for EACH USER EACH HOUR!

As mentioned here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....it-a-shot/

The licensing fees alone are 17 cents! Factor in bandwidth and design/programming fees and it’s a dead loss.

LOL

This is all hinging on the fact that they’re even able to get $11 CPM considering how worthless a box is for a music player.