MySpace Will Share iLike With Facebook
iLike is a Web-based social music discovery service, and claims to be the dominant music application on several social networking platforms.
Three-year-old iLike has been wildly successful and has 55 million total users and 1.5 billion monthly impressions thanks to its presence on sites that include small sites such as Bebo, Hi5 and iGoogle, as well as Facebook.
In separate statements, the dueling rivals said that the buy won't affect iLike's presence on either site.
"iLike was one of the first applications to be built on Facebook Platform and has become a success with more than 10 million users," said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement. "We expect that users will continue to discover and share music through the iLike application on Facebook."
A MySpace spokesperson echoed those thoughts.
"We don't anticipate any changes. We're excited about creating a larger distribution platform."
In a conference call, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said that combining the site with iLike will enable MySpace to create additional syndicated music and entertainment content.
"Both iLike and MySpace have a shared belief in open content distribution," he said. "The Web is moving from a centralized experience to one where people want to interact in many different places. One of the great things about MySpace is that its openness encourages discovery and the socialization of content. We're going to take that strategy and apply it across the Web."
Although it seems like a no-brainer that MySpace would fold iLike into MySpace Music, iLike will continue to operate as a separate entity in Seattle and won't be pigeonholed to just music.
"We believe what iLike has created isn't limited to just music and should extend to all of the areas important to MySpace users -- such as entertainment, video and games," Van Natta said. "Because we view the opportunities of this marriage beyond the music category, MySpace will be making this acquisition separate and apart from the MySpace Music joint venture. This is the best way to ensure both entities get the benefit of all of these great assets."