The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘ilike’

Troubled social networking giant MySpace has lost another key executive with the recent departure of John Faith, until recently General Manager and Vice President of MySpace Mobile. His resignation hasn’t been announced yet (nor has his LinkedIn profile been updated), but we’ve confirmed hallway rumors that he jumped ship at the end of January 2010 both with the man in question and the company he used to work for.

Faith has moved to Austin, Texas – just in time for SXSW – where he has joined local startup WhaleShark Media as SVP of Engineering.

That company’s still in stealth mode, but was founded by former Bankrate COO Cotter Cunningham, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on that one.

It’s worth noting that another key member of the MySpace Mobile team, Ulf Waschbusch, also left the company in July 2009 – he recently landed at gaming startup Garena.

I asked MySpace who was running all things mobile now that both employees walked away from the company, and they informed me that stepping in for Faith is Nat Brown. In case you’re not familiar with that name, Brown was once one of Microsoft’s foremost technical minds – he created and evangelized the ActiveX/COM object model in the early nineties and went on to play a crucial role in the creation of XML, DHTML, and the first Xbox.

Brown went on to do a brief stint as CTO at CAC Media before serving the same role at online music startup iLike, which was acquired by MySpace in August 2009.

MySpace says Brown will henceforth be taking charge of the Mobile division, and that we can expect a lot from that particular unit in the “very, very near future”.

We’ll see.

HootSuite, the Twitter clients that dubs itself as a social media dashboard for professionals, is launching an Android app, a new version of its iPhone app with Facebook integration and is integrating targeted ads in both apps via recently launched Twitter ad network, 140 Proof. HootSuite’s features are targeted towards helping marketing professionals keep track of the Twitter conversations happening on the web. The startup offers a free and paid version of its web app, and mobile clients.

The Android app features much of the same functionality as the iPhone app, including the ability to manage multiple Twitter account, create streams for hashtags and searches, schedule messages for the future, add followers to lists and accounts, share photos and shorten URLs. The paid versions allow for unlimited Twitter accounts plus on-board, click-through statistics tracking. The updated paid version of the iPhone App will include Facebook integration and landscape view.

And in an effort to boost revenue, HootSuite is partnering with 140 Proof to serve ads on all versions of its mobile offerings. Ads are served within users’ Twitter streams on and are clearly marked as ads, but act as Tweets that can be retweeted. HootSuite is taking the advertising risk on 140 Proof because the startup promises highly targeted advertising.

Twitter clients pass 140 Proof a user ID list (with no names) and the public information contained in a Twitter users profile, and on the advertiser side, advertisers bid on ads to be directed toward users based on keywords in tweets, followers, as well as device, location and platform. 140 Proof’s algorithms calculates Twitterer’s “persona” based on public tweets and who they follow and serves ads to users based on this data.

The deal with HootSuite is a big coup for 140 Proof, which just launched its network a few weeks ago. OneRiot is doing something similar with its realtime ad network RiotWise, and is seeing promising results during its private beta. And we are anxiously awaiting Twitter’s new advertising model which may or may not be revealed in the near future.

Sometimes you have to apply the smell test to what your sources are telling you, and the rumors we’re hearing about Apple’s purchase of music service LaLa are definitely smelling a little off. $80 million for LaLa? That isn’t what we’re hearing.

LaLa was purchased for $17 million by Apple, according to our sources with indirect knowledge of the deal. And the company supposedly had $14 million in cash in the bank, meaning the actual purchase price was really $3 million.

That’s in line with recent competitive sales like iLike ($20 million) and iMeem ($1 million). LaLa had plenty of cash in the bank, but they were burning $500k/month, say our sources. There’s just no reason Apple would pay $80 million for the company.

We also believe that LaLa was acquired mostly for the star engineering team and the awesome recent Google deal more than for the product. iTunes in the cloud isn’t something we should hold our breath for. $3 million for top-of Google music results and a top team of engineers makes a lot of sense. $80 million not so much.

LaLa has raised $35 million and was valued at $180 million or so in it’s last round of funding. The reason for the misreports on the $80 million sale may have to do with those numbers. We’ve heard that the purchase price was “forty or fifty cents on the dollar” from one source, meaning 40% or 50% of the $35 million in venture capital the company has raised. But a misunderstanding of what that means could easily have people thinking it was 40% or 50% of the last round valuation, which gets you the $80 million number.

If we get additional sources on this story either way we’ll update. LaLa, which used to love to talk to us, has become scarce when we call or email.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid traveled down to Los Angeles earlier today to cover the launch of Google Music Onebox. In addition to his live notes from the event and the panel, he managed to point his camera at just about everyone involved in the new service: Google Director Product Management Search R.J. Pittman, MySpace Music President Courtney Holt and LaLa founder Bill Nguyen. Jason also recorded his own first demo of the product, which didn’t go so well based on the mouse and browser setup.

Key takeaways – Google will integrate new partners as it makes sense. And while MySpace knew about the negotiations between iLike and Google prior to announcing their acquisition of iLike in August, the deal was far from certain. More on that in a subsequent post.

All are below:

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

As more details emerge about the MySpace-iLike acquisition, all sorts of interesting observations and questions pop up. A few thoughts:

The Facebook Angle

This is by far the most interesting angle to the deal. iLike is the most popular music application on Facebook, and is the de facto Facebook Music app. That company will shortly be owned by MySpace, Facebook’s primary competitor. That puts Facebook in a lose-lose situation. They can let iLike continue to dominate the music scene on Facebook and let MySpace own all that. Or they can ban iLike and lose all credibility with their platform - everyone would know iLike was banned because of the acquisition by MySpace. And it doesn’t have to be an outright ban. Facebook has plenty of subtle ways of trainwrecking an application they don’t like. Keep an eye on this.

Why didn’t Facebook just buy iLike? A matching or slightly better offer than the $20 million MySpace is paying would likely have gotten the deal done. And it may have saved Facebook from an embarrassing situation.

If I were MySpace, I’d focus on getting their free streaming music into the iLike Facebook application as soon as possible. Advertisers will love it.

This deal also shows what a top Facebook app is worth. Most of iLike’s activity comes through Facebook. They have 10 million monthly active users, and 31 million total Facebook installations (iLike has a total of over 50 million registered users). MySpace has valued that and the rest of iLike at $20 million, but has to factor in the possibility that Facebook will derail the application, subtly or overtly. If that risk wasn’t there, my guess is iLike would be worth 2-3x as much.

Why is MySpace and not MySpace Music buying iLike?

We’re hearing two reasons.The first is that MySpace Music, a joint venture with the music labels, isn’t going too well. The venture will lose at least $20 million this year on the back of massive royalty payments to the labels, and when the Google search deal ends next year the financial prospects of MySpace Music may get much, much worse. The last thing MySpace wants to do is put good money after bad and throw more assets into MySpace Music. Plus, the deal would likely have required notice to, if not the approval of, the label partners who own equity in the joint venture.

There’s another reason being talked about by our sources as well, though. iLike isn’t just about music and music recommendations. The platform they’ve built to facilitate artist-to-user publishing and user-to-user recommendations can be used for content beyond music, such as videos and games. Our guess is MySpace intends to integrate iLike’s technology into more than artist pages. So having the assets at MySpace makes sense.

MySpace Now Has Its Own Music Download Deals With Labels.

iLike launched its music download store last week. MySpace Music has streaming rights to music but not download sales rights. Today Amazon powers MySpace Music downloads. I’m sure MySpace is now considering (or already decided to) moving to a direct sales approach via iLike’s deals and software.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

We’ve confirmed from multiple sources that San Francisco/Seattle based music service iLike, which has been profitable since 2008, is raising new capital in an unusual transaction designed to push out Ticketmaster, an investor since 2006.

The company has raised a total of $16.5 million from the founders, Scott Banister, Bob Pittman, Vinod Khosla and Ticketmaster to date. But their last round of funding was in 2006, where Ticketmaster put the bulk of the capital in via a third round of financing that valued the company at a whopping $53.2 million.

In Q4 2008 Ticketmaster wrote down a number of their venture investments, including a $5.8 million charge for iLike. Internally, they valued that $13.3 million investment at just $7.5 million.

Now, we’ve confirmed, the founding team plus a new investor is offering to buy out all or some of Ticketmaster’s stake in the company. Founders Ali Partovi, Hadi Partovi and Nat Brown, all with significant personal fortunes, will invest part of the new round, with the new investor taking the rest.

The company isn’t commenting on this story.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

iLike, the popular music discovery site with a huge presence on social networks, is launching a set of new syndication services for musicians. Beginning tonight, iLike now offers extensive integration with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, allowing artists to distribute content to each of their online presences from a single control panel. In addition to these, the company is also launching a new self-serve platform for building customized iPhone applications for artists, allowing them to establish themselves on the App Store with a minimum amount of effort and resources.

While most readers probably associate iLike with music playlists and streaming, the service is also home to 300,000 artists who use its services to help manage and distrbute their content. Before today’s annoucement, the service offered more limited syndication options, allowing them send data through the iLike Facebook application, its iGoogle widget, and an iTunes plugin. But the new options go much further.

One of the most significant changes is the release of a new ‘Music’ tab for an artist’s Facebook pages, which will allow them to incorporate their music, videos, and concert information (previously artists would have to rely on the iLike Facebook application). The service has also expanded its support for Twitter, allowing artists to import their Tweets from elsewhere and distribute them to their social network profiles, or to syndicate them directly from the iLike dashboard.

Other additions abound: artists can now sync their videos between YouTube and iLike, so they won’t have to post them in multiple places. They can create their own ‘dot-com’ websites, which they can manage from the iLike dashboard. They can syndicate their content directly to their Ticketmaster profile pages. And iLike’s concert app and event pages on MySpace have also gotten a boost, allowing fans to purchase tickets directly without having to go elsewhere and including more social features (like being able to see who else is going to a certain concert).

Finally, in what is easily the biggest departure for the company, iLike is also rolling out a platform that will allow artists to create their own iPhone applications, which can include dynamically updated photos, music, blog posts, and other content (you can see a demo of the app below). iLike is charging artists a one-time fee of $99, and will also participate in a rev-share deal for those that want to charge for their applications (the current plan is for a 50/50 split). Artists that give their application away for free will only have to pay the initial fee. The iPhone is quickly becoming a very popular and powerful way to connect with fans, and there’s no doubt even smaller bands are eager to appear in the App Store. But iLike won’t be alone in trying to tackle this market - other companies like Mobile Roadie and Kyte are offering similar platforms for building custom iPhone apps.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Twitter is officially getting dumbed down.

For the second time in less than two months, Twitter has changed its @reply system, this time by removing an option that has existed for many months in an effort to appease confused newcomers.

The basic premise behind the @reply system is that it allows you to create a semi-public conversation with another Twitter user. To prevent you from having to listen in to conversations you might not care about, the default setting has long been to only show these @replies if you were following both people in the conversation. And that’s the choice most people stuck with.

But there was an option to receive all @reply messages from any users you were following. This led to an increase in noise, but it also exposed you to new Twitter users and conversations that you might have otherwise missed out on. I’ve had it turned on for over a year. But apparently that option has confused too many people, so Twitter is killing it.

From the Twitter blog:

We’ve updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

Confused? That’s understandable and exactly why we made the update.

Gee, thanks Twitter. I didn’t realize that an option I manually activated was undesirable. Any other things I shouldn’t like that you’d like to make me aware of?

If there was anything undesirable about the old system, it was that Twitter did a poor job of explaining it, not that the functionality itself was unwanted. And given that the option was not the default and was buried under a settings menu, why would it matter anyway? If too many people are getting confused, why not simply make it more hidden (perhaps under an ‘advanced’ tab)?

In the months since Twitter has grown in mainstream appeal, and especially since it made its debut on Oprah, some of Twitter’s early adopters have expressed fear over a change in the service. With a growing number of celebrities and media presences (not to mention spammers), they worry that the service will lose its tight-knit feel. Before tonight I never paid much attention to this train of thought - after all, on Twitter, I can just follow the people I care about and ignore those I don’t. But it’s clear that Twitter is concerned with appealing to a more mainstream audience, and if that takes making a very simple service even more simple, then by golly, that’s what they’re going to do.

Update 1: Many Twitter users are up in arms about the change, voicing their complaints under the channel #fixreplies, which is currently the top trending term on Twitter.

Update 2: Twitter CEO Evan Williams just tweeted about the change: “Reading people’s thoughts on the replies issue. We’re considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback.”

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors