Established Network Platform Still At It

UK-based Internet radio and music com munity Last.fm basically exploded into the Internet limelight when it was launched in 2002 and has since evolved into a huge social media site with over 21 million active users globally. Its popularity is largely due to the fact that it’s more of a customizable Internet radio site with a comprehensive list of musi-cians than it is a social networking community; a fact that is not lost on the users as they are naturally drawn to joining sites that offer more content and advanced Web 2.0 capabilities.

Usage is fairly simple, housed in a well organized page layout. Each artist profile page is chockfull of information neatly arranged in tabs on top of each page, including bios, videos, pictures, events, albums and a recommended list of musicians under the same genre you, as a listener, would probably like as well. On the other hand, user profiles also allow you to support your musicians by joining internal fan groups, keeping a journal, and listing the events you’ve attended. A Taste-O-Meter tab helps you decide whether to add another user or not by gauging your compatibility through how many artists you have in common in your playlists.

To be able to fully utilize Last.fm’s features, you’d have to download the accompanying Audioscrobbler software, which can be used even without setting your browser to the Last.fm site. You can use it to search songs which it automatically plays, and it gives you the options to recommend or have songs banned from ever being played again. You can also create playlists, which you can share with anyone from your buddy list. The software then queues up a series of tracks from other musicians that other users have recommended, letting you discover a lot of artists you may or may not have heard of. The songs you’ve played are then displayed in your profile page where other users can use the integrated Shoutbox to make comments.

There is an array of widgets you can append to your blog, personal site or other social networking profile pages that show off the songs you have recently played in either an embeddable media player or their respective album covers lined up in JPEG format. People from the open source community can also do some PHP diddling to create new plug-ins for the application or download from a list of user-submitted ones.