iLike Acquired by MySpace: Live Blogging the Press Call

19
Aug

iLike Acquired by MySpace: Live Blogging the Press Call

author: editor category: ReadWriteWeb

We just got an invitation to a MySpace press conference with MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta that will start at 11:45am PDT. We also just received news that MySpace did indeed buy the music recommendation service iLike. The financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

We will live blog the press conference, which should get underway shortly.

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Live Blog

10:45am: Still waiting for the call to get going. These events tend to run late, so no surprise there.

10:53: Van Natta: talking about the future strategy of MySpace

MySpace has agreed to buy iLike

Reason for acquisition: our relentless drive to innovate

Bringing world-class content into MySpace

“MySpace is a space where people go to express themselves”

Myspace is centralized – iLike is distributed

10:56: iLike users will not notice iLike acquisition

iLike team will remain in headquartered in Seattle

10:57: and that’s it… taking questions now

10:58: Question: what to expect next? Van Natta: nothing to announce yet – but film could be involved

The Press Release

MYSPACE TO ACQUIRE iLIKE

LOS ANGELES – August 19, 2009 – MySpace today announced an agreement to acquire iLike, a leading social music discovery service. The acquisition brings together two companies who 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, Chief Executive Officer 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.”

Brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi founded iLike in 2006, and in just two years made it the largest music application across all social networks with 55 million total users and 1.5 billion monthly impressions. The entire iLike team will stay intact including, CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi and CTO Nat Brown. All three are seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve held executive positions at both start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Prior to iLike, Ali Partovi founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft and Hadi Partovi independently co-founded and sold TellMe Networks, also to Microsoft. Hadi Partovi also incubated Start.com (now Live.com). Brown has a deep and respected history as an early architect at Microsoft, and he was involved in the creation the first Xbox, .NET/CLR, and ActiveX/COM/OLE. “MySpace’s strengths have been a long-time source of inspiration for iLike,” said Hadi Partovi, President of iLike. “Combining MySpace’s existing platform, reach and resources with iLike’s syndication network and social discovery tools creates the potential for truly exciting innovation and commerce across any vertical entertainment category — our combined assets now span all the major social networks. I’m enthusiastic about what this combination will mean for our users, artists, advertisers, and our staff. We are beginning an exciting new journey together.”

iLike users and the artist community should expect the iLike experience to be unaffected by the acquisition. iLike will remain headquartered in Seattle.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

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