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Like.com: Neat site or serious search tool?

My company recently added a client for whom Like.com is a direct competitor.

The Web site was much-hyped and reviewed 10 months ago, when it fired up, including being dubbed the "First True Visual Image Search," but little has been made of it since.

If you believe the traffic trend data from Alexa, traffic to Like.com has mirrored interest by the media and blogosphere, having a spike at launch, followed by a marked decline.

Like.com employs the technology of Riya, an image search company that focused primarily--until Like.com became a factor--on facial recognition. Now … Read more

Warner settles with Imeem

Online community Imeem launched in August 2005, and although I wasn't familiar with the service at the time, it sounds like a blend of several popular features: social networking, instant messaging, blogging and photo sharing. At some point, the company added a feature that would let users create playlists from their personal music collections, then stream these playlists to other users. By spring 2007, the service claimed 16 million active users.

The concept was a bit like MySpace.com, and like that site, Imeem eventually drew a copyright infringement lawsuit from a major record label--Warner Music Group, in this … Read more

Under the Radar: Music 2.0

This morning's presenters on music at today's Under the Radar conference are probably one of the most interesting groups. A few months ago, it would have been just another pitch session, but in light of radio silence day just a few days ago, music on the internet is a big deal--especially what happens to it when RIAA royalty rate increases go into effect next month.

iLike is a social network mixed up with online music. This morning they talked about their Facebook app, along with their integration with Apple's iTunes. iLike's CEO Ali Partovi considers Facebook'… Read more

Three music video search tools

With this morning's news of Last.fm launching a video service, we thought it would be worth mentioning a few resources that are out there for finding free music videos.

MusicTonic is a very slick search tool that mashes up various pieces of artist information like photos, album art, news stories, and a video playlist. It ties into a few online services like Flickr, YouTube, Last.fm, and MyStrands, among others. It's a lot like Foxytunes Planet, which we looked at in January, although there's no integration with any jukebox players.

Middio is a simplified music-video search … Read more

Sphere gives your blog a second (and third) opinion

From the Web 2.0 Conference (a bit late, sorry about that):

The blog search service Sphere is adding a feature called Sphere It. This is a widget that Web publishers (bloggers and "traditional" Web content sites, too) can put on their sites to automatically find blog posts related to their stories. It's easier to show than to explain. Click this:

Sphere It

Sphere also has a bookmarklet version of Sphere It that you can use on any site you visit.

Robert Scoble is not impressed, saying it doesn't find relevant articles. I've seen mixed … Read more