MySpace clinches deal to purchase music service iLike

Founded in 2006 by brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike claims to attract 55 million total users and 1.5 billion impressions a month. The entire iLike team, including the founders and chief technical officer Nat Brown, will remain in place and be based in Seattle.

iLike is a music recommendation service that tracks listeners' music choices and suggests new music based on previous choices. MySpace will also use iLike's recommendation engine to recommend new games and video, as well as new music.

Owen Van Natta, MySpace chief executive, said: "The iLike acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation and the need to create new distributed social experiences in music and beyond."

Van Natta added that the acquisition is part of the businesses commitment to bring world class talent into all areas of the company.

Prior to iLike, Ali Partovi founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft and Hadi Partovi independently co-founded and sold TellMe Networks, also to Microsoft. Brown worked at Microsoft and was involved in the creation the first Xbox.

This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk