San Francisco/Seattle based music service iLike launched a “news feed” for favorite artists this week. Users can now see exactly what their favorite artists are up to - when they go on tour, release new songs or videos, etc, the news is presented to them in the feed.
Users can select their favorite artist via the iLike website or on their social network applications. Or the service decides what you like based on your playing habits on iTunes (they have an iTunes plugin - if you listen to a song ten times, it thinks you like the artist).
The news feed for favorite artists can be viewed via the iTunes plugin, the website, the social network applications, or via a new iPhone app (just go to iLike on an iPhone and log in).
The company continues to dominate the Facebook music scene. Their U2 page on Facebook has 1.9 million fans. Compare that to just 168,000 friends on the MySpace U2 page, and 933,000 on Last.fm. The fact that a previously unreleased U2 song was first heard on iLike didn’t hurt those numbers, either.
In July 2007 iLike had 4.5 million users of its Facebook application. Today they have 14 million. But more than half of their new members today are coming from their iLike.com site and other social networks - OpenSocial gave them access to Bebo, Hi5 and soon MySpace. On their website alone they see 3.5 million worldwide monthly visitors, which isn’t bad considering most users interact with iLike via their iTunes plugin, or on Facebook and other social networks. Last.fm, which was acquired last year for $280 million, has 4.7 million.
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When is OpenSocial ready for mass adoption — to really outopen Facebook?
It’s not so much about it being better or worse than Facebook. What it does though is give application developers just two platforms (besides their website) to worry about. Build for Facebook and build for OpenSocial (to get all the other big sites). And you’re done.
The Facebook track is “near saturation” (in addition to apps overcrowding) and largely US-centric; OpenSocial holds more promises.. unfortunately it seems never [really] ready…
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In this race no ones better than…Last.fm. Dont understand why is the hype not around it.
very impressive growth!
Build for Facebook and build for OpenSocial
artiest = artist
I am just amused these days by Ilike’s success story. Personally, I attribute their rapid growth to three factors:
1) A great name…it’s pleasant, simple (2 syllables, easy to remember), and you just cant help but like it!
2) Their addictive music guessing game that essentially became their central business model
3) the common misperception that many often make associating them with Apple (doesn’t hurt their bottom line)
Last.FM might be the best social network music destination, but you can’t ignore ILike’s intangibles!
“In this race no ones better than…Last.fm.”
“Last.FM might be the best social network music destination”
I find this perception amongst a lot of tech-bloggers, you know, educated types. But last.fm plays a distant second to imeem.com in terms of user numbers, probably because imeem has more music, an embeddable player and millions of users who’ve never read a tech blog in their life. probably because they’ve spent all their time being music fans.
@ Chris:
“imeem has more music”
Really ? Do you have figures ?
“(imeem has) an embeddable player”
So does Last.fm as well as various other widgets and a client software
“(imeem has) millions of users who’ve never read a tech blog in their life. probably because they’ve spent all their time being music fans”
Interesting logic… I read tech blogs = I don’t like music, I don’t read tech blogs = I must be a music fan then…
Enjoying music is not easy these days…