Proving how the social media space continues to break business conventions, a company that began life as a popular app on Facebook for streaming music is about to be acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace for an estimated US$20m.
In recent days iLike launched a music download store featuring MP3s from big four record labels Warner Music, Universal, Sony BMG and EMI.
iLike began life as a popular application on Facebook and was around from the very launch of the social networking site three years ago. Today Facebook has some 250m users worldwide.
MySpace, which was the original of the species, saw its popularity wane as Facebook’s star began to rise thanks to applications such as iLike.
In the past year MySpace has been trying to return to its roots as a music destination and launched its own streaming music service MySpace Music.
According to a report on TechCrunch, iLike has now more than 50 million registered users and is the top music application on Facebook, Bebo and every other social networking site except for MySpace.
Nearly 10m Facebook users alone use the iLike application every month.
By John Kennedy
