MYSPACE TO ACQUIRE ILIKE

The deal does not include any of ex-My Space principal Tom Anderson's 1,876,437 friends.

iLike, which launched in late 2006, is a social music recommendation service with more than 50 million registered users as the top music application on Facebook, Bebo and Hi5. As a host for band pages, iLike is second in popularity only to MySpace Music. Last week, the site, which has nearly 10 million users on Facebook alone, launched its own music download store.

According to techcrunch.com, “the key driver” in the deal is the underlying technology as well as the site’s founders, Ali and Hadi Partovi and Nat Brown, and the agreement was forged by MySpace, not the company's MySpace Music.

Competitor Last.fm was acquired by CBS in 2007 for $280 million and boasts 12 million unique visitors for June 2009. iLike had just 3 million monthly unique visitors, though it has a wide viral following on the social networks.

The company has raised a total of $16.5 million from investors, including ex-MTV ruler Bob Pittman and Ticketmaster. Their last round of financing came in 2006, when the company was valued at $53.2 million.

In Q4 2008, Ticketmaster wrote down several of its investments, including a $5.8 million charge for iLike. Internally, they valued their $13.3 million investment at just $7.5 million.