(Editor’s note: We promised a 24-hour moratorium on Facebook coverage. That is now over.)
Here’s the early winner of Facebook’s open embrace of third-party applications, announced two days ago: iLike, a hot music service that lets you discover music that matches your tastes with others.
iLike’s users on Facebook have reached around 180,000 early this evening, from a mere 1,000 on Friday morning — that’s orders of magnitude larger than any other of the new Facebook applications (see full list here).
Let’s be clear. Facebook is in the news for a reason. Its open-door policy to other services — offering them a clear way to make money — is highly significant to the wider Web 2.0 community, and both a possible boon and risk for Facebook itself. Its 24 million young users give Web 2.0 companies a fertile playground for testing. Facebook offers a level playing field, which means that companies that gain traction — like iLike — are doing so not because of superior amounts of venture capital or scamming techniques, but because the community is voting for it (although it would be naive to say that clever marketing won’t happen from within Facebook). The risk for Facebook is in forgoing earning revenue from its own services.
So why iLike? There’s been a huge demand for music-focused socializing on Facebook (which isn’t surprising considering how central music is to MySpace users). iLike helps people find new music by learning what their friends are listening to; through Facebook’s platform, it allows users to add music to profiles and help them find their favorite concerts (and learn which friends are going to which concerts). iLike also offers free mp3’s that match users’ tastes. (VB’s earlier coverage here).
We should point out that the leading application also has an advantage because it tops the list of “favorites” at Facebook, and new users are likely to look closely at it — and so there’s a snowball effect.
However, in a fascinating twist on the music issue, another music app on Platform, called Audio, was No. 2 on Facebook with over 30,000 users when we checked this afternoon. It has since disappeared from the application directory. Created by a single developer, Numair Faraz, Audio allows users to search for and listen to tracks in the applications’ library of user-submitted music files. It lets them take tracks from Audio and add them to their Facebook profile page. Faraz told VentureBeat he was in the act of presenting the application to friends who work with major music labels when he discovered that it was gone. He called a Facebook Platform contact, who he says is investigating the matter.
Immediate calls to Facebook were unreturned.
Faraz told he’s assuming this “is just some sort of temporary glitch.” Users, in the meantime, can still add Audio to their profiles at this link — Faraz says that he’s still gaining users through news feeds.
Start-ups that integrated their free-standing services with Platform are getting more users than they can handle, as Om notes. Most of all, iLike. CEO Ali Partovi is currently crying out for more servers to keep up with demand (see email below).
A note on Facebook’s search: We searched for “iLike,” and got gobbledygook. The first result is “Tim Ilikeyomamabetter Alford,” and it goes downhill from there. Facebook claims its search does the equivalent of 10 percent of Google’s search traffic, but it will need some work.
9 Comments
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Zaid said:
Eric, what about all the user complaints about iLike on iLike’s facebook wall?
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Tamar Weinberg said:
ZAID: I have no relationship with iLike except that I installed their app on my Facebook profile.
Generally, you need to work on the core problems — servers first — before you focus on the other issues. How can they possibly address the smaller issues when the load is preventing them from even getting the application to run smoothly?
I assume that once the server quota is met, they’ll be able to be more active and fix the problems that users are encountering with the iLike application, but until then, users will just have to wait.
In any event, I’m having fun playing the iLike challenge at 5am.
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Eric Eldon said:
Zaid, I think Tamar is right about scaling. Many of the complaints on the iLike wall were about that issue.
Still, the wall has been pretty negative about other aspects. The app is STILL doubling in size (now at around 315k), so the commenters must be a just fraction of the total users
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keanu said:
what I want to see is happening.
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Andrew Jia said:
It’s amazing for such a rapid growth, we can find the strength of co-marketing here and the advantage of open-platform.
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simon said:
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Rodney Rumford said:
The network effect that facebook has on these third party widget and application providers is mind boggling. Also of note is that the most popular does not mean the most useful. ;)
Cheers and hooooray to facebook for making this move. It is going the raise the bar for many companies and offer opportunities for the smart companies to leverage the network.
We immediately started a ratings and review blog of new applications and widgets available on facebook. We think it is important to bring knowledge of some great apps with video and text reviews to help people to decide what applications to consider.
You can see the reviews here: http://www.facereviews.com
Rodney Rumford
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Bruno said:
Here is a video interview of iLike CEO
http://us.intruders.tv/Interview-Ali-Partovi-CEO-of-iLike_a174.html
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daps said:
To Nick O’Neil | posted 05.27.07 | 2:10 pm
Are you still of the same opinion re: iLike ie; “I think it will get removed”?
Honestly!
19 Trackbacks
8:33 am
Will Facebook Platform Be The New Arbiter Of Web 2.0? » Publishing 2.0 said:
[...] so far has been iLike, which rocketed from 1,000 Facebook users on Friday to 180,000 yesterday (via VentureBeat). iLike has been so success that it’s now desperate hunting for more servers. In contrast, [...]
1:56 pm
Be careful what you wish for, iLike » mathewingram.com/work said:
[...] of days, as they watch all their servers explode into flames from the heat of 50,000 new users all wanting to log in at the same time. According to an email posted at Venturebeat, the company doubled the number of [...]
2:10 pm
TheWebpreneur.com - Everything web and business. By Nick O'Neill » Blogosphere Weekly Roundup said:
[...] Facebook audio mysteriously disappears - Eric Eldon covers how a new Audio feature that was created has disappeared from the applications list. My thoughts? Facebook will be launching a new music feature and has other partners that are heavily invested in launching the new feature. As of now adding music to your profile doesn’t seem to work properly, and I have a feeling that this app will get removed. [...]
2:50 pm
Feeling My Age on Facebook « Perpetual Motion said:
[...] My Age on Facebook Posted by perpetualmotion under Society , Technology After reading a constant stream of impressive feedback from a variety of sources this week on Facebook’s new [...]
3:30 am
mind new media » Blog Archive » Facebook To Become The People’s Search Engine said:
[...] A note on Facebook’s search: We searched for “iLike,” and got gobbledygook. The first result is “Tim Ilikeyomamabetter Alford,” and it goes downhill from there. Facebook claims its search does the equivalent of 10 percent of Google’s search traffic, but it will need some work.(via vb) [...]
3:34 am
mind new media » Blog Archive » Will Facebook Platform Be The New Arbiter Of Web 2.0? said:
[...] so far has been iLike, which rocketed from 1,000 Facebook users on Friday to 180,000 yesterday (via VentureBeat). iLike has been so success that it’s now desperate hunting for more servers. In contrast, [...]
3:36 am
mind new media » Blog Archive » iLike & Facebook said:
[...] link [...]
6:37 am
yashke.com » Facebook effect said:
[...] list Al’ego [za venturebeat], który szukał przez weekend serwerów, które byłyby w stanie wytrzymać ruch wygenerowany [...]
2:03 pm
Basic Thinking Blog » iLike gerät unter die Facebook-Dampfwalze said:
[...] kam aus dem Lachen ob des Luxusproblems nicht mehr raus (siehe Mailauszug):)) Parallel hatte ich den Artikel von Jochen gelesen, Facebook [...]
2:14 pm
All Facebook » Blog Archive » Facebook: All Your Resources Belong to Us! said:
[...] a portion of each track you place on your profile. According to a post published on Venturebeat, iLike was desperately seeking 40 extra servers to borrow for the weekend. They should have given me a call because I have a couple hundred sitting [...]
2:13 am
mind new media » Blog Archive » Q&A with iLike’s Ali Partovi, on Facebook said:
[...] iLike, a popular music sharing site has scored 723,936 users on Facebook. It is by far the most popular application. We interviewed iLike chief executive, Ali Partovi. He compares Facebook’s platform to the web [...]
11:18 am
Brainplugg Channels » Q&A with iLike’s Ali Partovi, on Facebook said:
[...] iLike, a popular music sharing site has scored 723,936 users on Facebook. It is by far the most popular application. We interviewed iLike chief executive, Ali Partovi. He compares Facebook’s platform to the web [...]
2:30 pm
Facebook: The most costly hardware crunch in startup history »Technology News | Venture Capital, Startups, Silicon Valley, Web 2.0 Tech said:
[...] A note to all those companies, such as iLike, which are desperately adding computer hardware to cope with a surge of visitors from Facebook: [...]
4:34 pm
VentureBeat » Q&A with iLike’s Ali Partovi, on Facebook said:
[...] iLike, a popular music sharing site has scored 723,936 users on Facebook. It is by far the most popular application. We interviewed iLike chief executive, Ali Partovi. He compares Facebook’s platform to the web [...]
10:26 am
VentureBeat » When it comes to music fans, iLike faces Myspace said:
[...] “A month ago, if I told anybody we could unseat MySpace in music, they’d say I was crazy,” Partovi told us in May, only a few days after launching iLike’s Facebook application. “Today, it seems not only possible, but actually like it’s on track to happen unless we screw it up,” he said then. ILike has been the most popular music application on Facebook since it launched in late May. [...]
3:16 pm
VentureBeat » Q&A with Blake Commagere: Top Facebook app developer sizes up OpenSocial said:
[...] back in May and June, in terms of gaining users quickly at the outset of the platform? (See here and here for more on that.) Blake Commagere: Naturally I’m going to try out OpenSocial. It [...]
9:45 pm
越来越丰富的Blog < MJiA said:
[...] Social Application 平台其实没有想过这个，不过这几天被Facebook的几条新闻和最新的发展吸引住了，Facebook的创始人真牛。最近几天Techcrunch和Techmeme都相继报道或者引用了Facebook加入iLike应用系统的事情，iLike是国外很火的一个音乐service，不是很了解。不过打开facebook之后，发现之前以个人Profile和交流为主的网页已经变成了以若干Application为主，当然支撑facebook的核心价值还是Social Network，不过这些Application完全是拥抱第三方的产物，你可以在你的profile上添加各种Application来充实自己的内容，结交更多的朋友。CBS上的报道说：“Facebook Inc. is encouraging other companies to sell products and create software for use on the popular social networking site, hoping to expand into a universal destination on the Web. ”而在Facebook支持了iLike的App的两天里，就增加了来自iLike的18万用户。拥抱第三方的服务，不同于增加一个第三方的widget，而是成为了一个集成平台，这应该是一个巨大的突破。搜狐一直努力打造搜狐矩阵，而也将各种产品都集中在blog上，但是我觉得仅仅是个portal，而且到目前为止我的还不能用，呵呵。同样，我最喜欢的网络服务之一——flickr，也积极鼓励人们来制造软件为flickr的用户服务，不过更多的也只是类似toolkit的东西。Facebook集成其他的网络服务，可以想象以下，音乐社区、电影社区等等，这将会形成一个多么大的平台啊，facebook作为平台也会成为整个生态系统中食物链的上层。有人说在facebook身上已经看到了网络操作系统的影子，好像不是很夸张，CBS的报道题目就是Facebook Aspires To Be The Next Microsoft。 [...]
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VentureBeat » Bebo’s platform growing, worth something said:
[...] on May 24, grew to millions of users within a couple weeks. (See our earlier coverage of companies like iLike and [...]
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Widgets are great for musicians, and not so bad for businesses, either » VentureBeat said:
[...] service on Facebook, after the social network’s developer platform launched last May (our coverage). Its applications let you play a music quiz game, put clips of your favorite songs on your profile [...]