Tons of new features, and iLike hits 25mm users :)

In the last few 12 months iLike has expanded across the web beyond iLike.com to Facebook, Bebo, hi5, and Orkut, and also beyond the Web onto iTunes, Windows Media Player, and the iPhone. A year ago we had just announced 3 million users. Now, one year later, we just passed the 25 million registered user mark. Wow, what a year it's been!

Some great updates on new features we've added since our last blog post...

1) Improved, richer artist pages
The artist pages on iLike.com and across the iLike network now reflect a richer design - we've separated out the artist-uploaded content into different modules for blogs, photos, bulletins, and videos. This particularly lets you more prominently see artist-uploaded videos, since there is a lot of cool stuff that artists have uploaded. For example, in this screenshot, you can see a recent video uploaded by Jason Mraz.

2) Local concert alerts from your favorite artists 
iLike has always kept track of your favorite artists, but in the past we've sent you reminders for concerts in a rolled-up newsletter, and we heard feedback that this sometimes caused people to miss a concert since the information was lost in a bunch of other data.  Now we send you a specific email whenever one of your Artists iLike announces a concert near you (edit your location here). On iLike.com and also on Facebook, you can click "I'm going" or "I want to go", and see who else is going.

On the Facebook version of iLike, you can also invite friends to go to the concert, and see who else in your college or highschool is interested. You can also see all the upcoming local concerts your Facebook friends are going to.

3) Artist-specific quizzes
Actually, we launched this feature a while back on Facebook, but we forgot to blog about it. (oops!). You can now play the iLike Challenge for many of your favorite artists - just pick an artist, visit their page, and click the Play Now button to see how well you can name the songs by the artists. You get 10 questions, up to 100 points, and challenge your friends. :)

 

4) Music recommendations from Facebook friends
On the Facebook version of iLike, you can now recommend music to your friends each time you "iLike" it. The first person across all of Facebook to recommend any song gets a permanent badge on that song's page, but there are also slots available to be the "first" within any smaller Facebook network whether its regional, college, highschool, etc.

Since enough of your Facebook friends are already busy tagging their favorite music on iLike already, we have now started also showing rollups of this week's most popular music among your friends, in your highschool, college, region, etc. This is one of the coolest capabilities we've ever built, because it uses the full power of the social-graph of a site like Facebook, combined with the rich user<->music interactions of iLike, to built a recommendation system tailored to your tastes and your friends. :-)

Anyway, wow, that's a lot to write about, and there's even more but we know you can't read it all. It's been a BUSY month at iLike!   

To close things off, the latest "quote of the week" came from Marcus, our product manager, who handles so much email that he spends hours simply dealing with organizing it: "I think my new job is - I'm a glorified inbox rule!". (we hope Marcus will soon figure out how to set up his inbox rules to work automatically for him.)

Comments

[James Kocsis]

Holy Crap!

It feels like yesterday that you guys were announcing 3 million users. It's been great to be a part of the ride since (practically) the beginning.

Keep it up!!

[Taha Paksu]

I couldn't find a contact form and i needed some information about logging in to this site, so i decided to post it here. Why don't you have a contact form :) I'm registered to this site in facebook and have added many artists and dedicated songs and etc. but i can't log in here and i want to do that. How can I do this without creating a new profile and use my existing one? There's no info either in facebook or here.Could someone help me?

[Edhy H]

hi guys congrats about the 25 millions what a incredible year for everybody here, keep working, you are the best music page and im glad to be part of this community

[Matt Rogers]

Wow that is exciting, we look forward to seeing you grow even more!

[Hip-Hop]

This is great guys, I look forward to the growth....

[digitalTRAFFIC]

hi guys of ilike
so cool hitting the 25m... its great to be part of this growing exciting community.
dT intends to interact more with all the beneftits iLike has to offer music creators.
keep up the excellent work
all the very best
donaldo
digitalTRAFFIC
---

[Mercury Thread]

Hey guys - 25 million cool. Just found your site while going through stumbleupon and here I am signed up for an account and just going to fill it up with bands - now where are PWEI these days....

[Thom]

It would be helpful to artist page administrators to be able pick which videos get displayed in the Video section of iLike. By the sound of the FAQ, this may or may not be coming, but it's still worth reiterating.

Thanks. You rock.

[Scott]

iLike is shutting out a lot of people (like me). You really need to follow last.fm's example and open up to anyone who wants to include iLike capabilities in their music player software.

I can submit my songs to last.fm with numerous programs in Windows and even more in Linux.

And most of my libray is in the vastly superior FLAC format. That barely shuts out Windows Media Player (it can be fixed - somewhat with a plugin) and completely eliminates iTunes.

Take a look at what last.fm is doing.

[Liz]

iLike rocks my world.

[Rel]

One of my favorite songs changed in my profile. Now it's playing the wrong song. Can this be fixed?

[Brendan]

Does iLike have a set place recommendations/features can be made? You guys have obviously done a ton, and it's way neat, just would be nice to have some way to offer recommendations. Comes to mind now because it'd be neat to be able to:

1. Add an artist (not just songs) to a wishlist, b/c with a new artist you hear about you may not know songs yet; and

2. Export your wishlist so over years and years one can create a wishlist of songs they'd like to buy when able (and still have it in case iLike shuts done or crashes)

Muchas gracias!

Brendan

[Brendan]

Oh, as a quick add-on, it'd also be neat to be able to make little notes to oneself (and/or to others) in the wishlist section about e.g., who recommended the artist to you, or about where you heard about the artist, etc.

[soeaja]

hi, i'm a user of last.fm and pretty upset with the latest update of their so I try iLike. It's pretty similar like last.fm. unless you guys are more humble. i like humbleness.

anyway, do you have some feedback pages like forum etc? or you taking feedback from your blog?

cheers and beers.

[MT]

Would be nice if people could post info on past concerts they've attended, with people commenting, sharing their experiences, etc. Any plans for something like that in the future?

[Andrew]

I'm not sure where to post problems I encounter since I never found a way on site, but I'm using the iLike app on my hi5 and it's a great app, I love the quizz mostly BUT when I try to make dedications to my friends, they are always listed as ".. to Anonymous" instead of the nick of the friend I sent it to. Ideas?

[Fred Smilek]

25mm users back in 2008? how many are they right now?

Fred Smilek

Fred Smilek is the acting president of the Society to Save Endangered Species. It was founded two years ago. http://fredjsmilek.com