In what appears to be the first major step in a possible turnaround for the struggling social network, MySpace confirmed a whirlwind of rumors Wednesday when it announced it will acquire iLike. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.
iLike is a social music-discovery service that feeds music fans suggestions on sites like Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, hi5 and iGoogle. iLike helps people share music recommendations, playlists and personalized concert alerts. iLike also offers musicians and labels an artist dashboard from which to reach fans, manage their presence across multiple channels, and cultivate the spread of their music. iLike also runs indie music site GarageBand.com.
Brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi founded iLike in 2006. The application has 55 million users and 1.5 billion monthly impressions. As MySpace sees it, the acquisition brings together two companies that share a common vision revolving around social discovery and distribution of quality content.
“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, CEO 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.”
An Impressive iLike Team
MySpace said iLike users and the artist community would not be disrupted by the acquisition. The application will continue to be available on competing social networks and the entire iLike team will stay on board to run the division, including CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi and CTO Nat Brown.
This trio of executives could be an asset to MySpace as the company tries to turn around its fortunes. All three are seasoned entrepreneurs who have held executive positions at startups and Fortune 100 companies.
Before iLike, Ali Partovi founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft, and Hadi Partovi…