social networking
Imeem To Acquire Tracking Company Snocap
Your bookshelf is not complete without these books! Check out the Absolutely Must Have Books List The Los Angeles Times (4/8, Quinn, Menn, 881K) reports, “By buying Snocap, Imeem, which owns a social-networking site that lets users listen to free music and watch videos, signaled its intention to offer new ways to search, discover and sample digital media. Analysts said it also might mean the firm will start selling music and other content.” Imeem “links to Apple Inc.’s iTunes store and Amazon.com Inc.’s MP3 store, which pay fees to the social network. But by owning Snocap, whose technology it began to use last year, Imeem could be setting the stage for selling music and other digital media, said Mike McGuire, an analyst with Gartner Inc. Imeem declined to comment on retail plans. ‘They are going to want to enable some direct selling,’ McGuire said. ‘That’s a natural extension of the platform.’” Erick Schonfeld wrote at TechCrunch (4/7), “The Snocap registry is a key part of imeem’s APIs, which allow third-party developers to build their own music apps on imeem.” He noted that industry insiders “still question whether imeem can make any money based on its generous deals with the music labels, but its service is resonating with consumers. According to comScore, imeem attracted 19 million unique visitors worldwide in February. The bet here is that perhaps at high enough volume, it can start to break even.” BetaNews (4/7, Conneally) reported, “After Snocap saw a major downsizing, laying off 60% of its workforce, the company made it known it was pursuing a sale. Four months later, reports started to circulate that social network for artists and musicians imeem had entered into an acquisition of the suffering company.” The piece noted, “Imeem is a member of Google’s OpenSocial network along with MySpace, so developments in that stratum may finally begin for imeem, which recently opened its API, Imeem Media Platform, opening up the site’s library of songs, videos and photos to developers.” Rafat Ali wrote at paidContent.org (4/7) that Snocap “had changed tracks a few times: started a music ID/registry for P2P distribution, and when the industry didn’t take off, moved to a widget-based model to sell music through social networking sites and blogs. Meanwhile, Fanning has moved on, as he usually does after stirring the pot, and has launched Rupture, a virtual social community for online gamers.” Technorati Tags: web 2.0, social networking
