iLike Widget – A Review

The Last.FM widget may have met its match with the launch of iLike.

iLike is a social networking service with an iTunes plugin that gives you music recommendations based on your listening habits, facilitates introductions to likeminded listeners, and provides you with free downloads from up and coming bands.

The iLike widget is a Flash-based widget that displays tracks listened to via iTunes, and allows viewers to play samples of some tracks within the body of the widget.

Configuration & Testing

If you believe iLike’s site navigation, widget generation is expected to be a critical piece of their business.  There are only four navigation options – invite friends, view profile, find people, and share your tastes (widgets).

Clicking the "share" button takes you to the widget set up page.  There are no widget configuration options currently offered by iLike.  The default widget width is 175 pixels, meaning it fits nicely on both MySpace and blog sidebars.

There is a nice MySpace widget add feature that allows you to plug your iLike widget into your MySpace music field without leaving iLike.  The tool asks for your MySpace login info (which it claims not to save) and then does the rest.  I tried it out, and it worked without a problem. 

The widget itself is simple and clean, and allows the viewer to toggle between the last tracks played by the publisher, and the publisher’s overall top played bands.

The widget is nicely branded, with some interesting data tracking information built in.  Running your mouse over the bottom, branded portion of the widget adjusts the url to capture the exact coordinates of your click.  I would imagine that this information will be useful for optimizing the widget in terms of adding advertisements or other features.

But the standout feature is the ability to play some tracks within the body of the widget.  For some tracks, a small “play” button appears next to the track, allowing the viewer to listen to a 30-second portion of the song within the body of the widget.   

It doesn’t seem that iLike’s music sample library is the same as iTunes’ – there are tracks that I purchased on iTunes that won’t play on the iLike widget.  It may be that these track samples come via their connection with Garageband, as reported by Pete Cashmore.

Editorial

For months, the Last.FM widget has been my favorite widget.  It displayed reasonably fresh content without me having to do anything, told people something about me, and tapped into my vanity as a self-proclaimed music snob.

iLike takes this widget a step farther by actually allowing people to play the songs.  This is a huge development in the music widget space, and important enough for me to replace my image based Last.FM widgets with the Flash-based iLike widgets.

ILike also exploits a few more weaknesses of the Last.FM widget.  iLike’s widget updates in real time, while Last.FM’s updates sporadically.  More importantly, the iLike download plugs in directly to iTunes, as opposed to just working with iTunes like Last.FM’s iScrobbler.  In other words, if iTunes is on, iLike is getting the data.  With iScrobbler for OSX, you have to remember to turn on iScrobbler whenever you reboot your computer.  This accounts for some big data gaps on my Last.FM music history on days that I forgot to turn on iScrobbler.  If you compare my overall listening history as captured by Last.FM, it is incomplete, and therefore inaccurate.  iLike gets it completely right.

So to summarize, the iLike widget is fresher, more interactive, and more accurate than Last.FM’s widget.  That’s a pretty powerful combination, and a clear sign that competition is driving innovation in the social music space.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about the iLike site itself – let’s just say it was nice to have some free, reasonably well targeted MP3’s from bands that I hadn’t heard of waiting for me in my site inbox.

I’ll be watching iLike with interest.