MySpace has snapped up the Facebook-centric music application iLike, for around €14 million.
The founders of iLike, Ali and Hadi Partovi, created the service in 2006 backed by €11.5 million in VC funding from Ticketmaster and others. The Partovi brothers will stay on in senior management positions running the acquisition from its HQ in Seattle.
The music recommendation and online retail service boasts 55 million users, 10 million of whom are on Facebook.
“We believe what iLike has created isn't limited to just music and should extend to all the areas important to MySpace users, such as entertainment, video, and games,” MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said.
He said the iLike technology would complement its MySpace Music joint venture, a free music streaming and discovery platform it launched with major recording companies in September.
The application’s ability to attach itself to Apple's iTunes music store with song recommendations, include notification of upcoming concerts and Twitter posts by users favorite artists and allow users to see what their friends are listening to fits squarely onto MySpace’s re-casting of itself as an entertainment destination rather than a social platform. The application also holds a wealth of valuable demographic and rich marketing data on musical preferences of individual users.
Meanwhile Facebook is facing a civil lawsuit from five of its users who claim the social networking site violated California privacy laws.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Orange County Superior Court, alleges that Facebook violated privacy laws by distributing personal information posted by users to third parties misleading members about how their personal information was being distributed and used.
The group of five, which includes two children who are under 13, a photographer and an actress are all suing the giant for different reasons but claim that the social networker is involved in undisclosed “data mining and harvesting practices” without disclosing those practices to members.