In olden times, the pope would often crown a new king. These days, that duty sometimes falls to Facebook – iLike’s recent success has been attributed almost entirely to that one site.
iLike’s “social music discovery” service launched in late 2006, and the company released an app for iTunes and sealed a deal with Ticketmaster in the months to follow. Yet the service remained an interesting concept with a small user base. Then iLike created an app for Facebook, and it is now the “Web’s Fastest-Growing Music Service.”
“iLike is actually better on Facebook than as a stand-alone application,” iLike’s CEO, Ali Partovi, told Reuters‘s Antony Bruno. “It’s a little sad to have to admit that your own Web site isn’t as good as the thing you build for Facebook, (but) there’s a community already there. That’s impossible to re-create on your own.”
Indeed, not too many social networks offer anything close to Facebook’s 25 million users. One of those that can – MySpace – is beginning to lose its lead (especially in the UK), and doesn’t impress Partovi, anyway.
“Comparing the Facebook platform to (MySpace) widgets is like comparing the emergence of mammals to dinosaurs,” Partovi continued in his Reuters interview. “iLike (on Facebook) already knows what your music tastes are, who your friends are and what their music tastes are. Facebook has completely redefined what’s possible for a third party co-existing in a social networking environment.”
It sounds as if iLike is very grateful for its crown.
