MySpace To Acquire iLike
MySpace today announced an agreement to acquire iLike, social music discovery service, as the once-hot social networking site tries to reinvent itself as an entertainment portal.
"The iLike acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation and the need to create new distributed social experiences in music and beyond," said Owen Van Natta, Chief Executive Officer of MySpace. "We are deeply committed to bringing world class talent into all areas of the company and this acquisition demonstrates our focus on this objective."
iLike is best known as a popular social music discovery service on Facebook, the social networking site that has overtaken MySpace as the top Web destination for friends and family to share photos, messages, video clips and other media.
Brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi founded iLike in 2006, and in just two years made it the largest music application across all social networks with 55 million total users and 1.5 billion monthly impressions. The entire iLike team will stay intact including, CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi and CTO Nat Brown. All three are seasoned entrepreneurs who?ve held executive positions at both start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Prior to iLike, Ali Partovi founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft and Hadi Partovi independently co-founded and sold TellMe Networks, also to Microsoft. Hadi Partovi also incubated Start.com (now Live.com). Brown has a respected history as an early architect at Microsoft, and he was involved in the creation the first Xbox, .NET/CLR, and ActiveX/COM/OLE.
"MySpace?s strengths have been a long-time source of inspiration for iLike," said Hadi Partovi, President of iLike. "Combining MySpace?s existing platform, reach and resources with iLike?s syndication network and social discovery tools creates the potential for truly exciting innovation and commerce across any vertical entertainment category -- our combined assets now span all the major social networks. I'm enthusiastic about what this combination will mean for our users, artists, advertisers, and our staff. We are beginning an exciting new journey together."
iLike users and the artist community should expect the iLike experience to be unaffected by the acquisition. iLike will remain headquartered in Seattle.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.
In related news, iLike is now enabling music fans who discover and share music on iLike to purchase songs and albums (in MP3 format) in-page directly from iLike.com.
iLike's MP3 download service is currently in Beta on iLike.com.
iLike is best known as a popular social music discovery service on Facebook, the social networking site that has overtaken MySpace as the top Web destination for friends and family to share photos, messages, video clips and other media.
Brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi founded iLike in 2006, and in just two years made it the largest music application across all social networks with 55 million total users and 1.5 billion monthly impressions. The entire iLike team will stay intact including, CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi and CTO Nat Brown. All three are seasoned entrepreneurs who?ve held executive positions at both start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Prior to iLike, Ali Partovi founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft and Hadi Partovi independently co-founded and sold TellMe Networks, also to Microsoft. Hadi Partovi also incubated Start.com (now Live.com). Brown has a respected history as an early architect at Microsoft, and he was involved in the creation the first Xbox, .NET/CLR, and ActiveX/COM/OLE.
"MySpace?s strengths have been a long-time source of inspiration for iLike," said Hadi Partovi, President of iLike. "Combining MySpace?s existing platform, reach and resources with iLike?s syndication network and social discovery tools creates the potential for truly exciting innovation and commerce across any vertical entertainment category -- our combined assets now span all the major social networks. I'm enthusiastic about what this combination will mean for our users, artists, advertisers, and our staff. We are beginning an exciting new journey together."
iLike users and the artist community should expect the iLike experience to be unaffected by the acquisition. iLike will remain headquartered in Seattle.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.
In related news, iLike is now enabling music fans who discover and share music on iLike to purchase songs and albums (in MP3 format) in-page directly from iLike.com.
iLike's MP3 download service is currently in Beta on iLike.com.
