 RAIN 4/23: Wired details Pandora's use of new Facebook tools ·Apr 23, 10:33 AM BOND WILL “SOLIDIFY BOTH COMPANIES’ DOMINANCE”Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk takes a closer look at the partnership between Facebook and Pandora we reported on yesterday (here). Users will notice the most changes when using Pandora, not Facebook. For example, users can link their Facebook profile in Pandora and instantly see what stations and artists their friends listen to. Van Buskirk notes (here), “With your accounts integrated, you can make stations from any song a friend has liked and can copy their artist stations over to your own profile, where they will be shaped by your own musical preferences.”
And then there’s those “Like” buttons that will soon appear around the Internet. When you click one of those anywhere online, Pandora can access that information — using the Open Graph API Facebook recently announced — and use it to further Additionally, when you’re listening to a song one of your friends has “liked,” “a tag will appear to let you know. One side effect of this new feature will likely be to encourage Pandora users to add more tracks to their favorites…the more they sculpt their stations and preferences, the more reason they have to stick with Pandora for their online (and, increasingly, device-based) radio listening.” What’s nice about these integrations is Facebook is running almost in the background: Facebook is collecting user data not to spam all your friends with your Pandora listening patterns (though you can still do that if you want), but to further improve your Pandora listening experience and make it more social. “Pandora + Facebook = such easy math that even the busy or excessively lazy can integrate it into their lives,” Van Buskirk writes. The implication here is that Internet radio can leverage already existing data and information from Facebook to make their services more user-friendly — webcasters don’t have to reinvent the social networking wheel.
“The idea is to have your own personalised radio station. Not the poor approximation to that we have at the moment, but rather, as if you’d hired a radio music programmer, and asked them to make a radio station just for you, using your own music collection as a starting point,” Dubber writes. “Please go ahead and make this. The idea’s up for grabs.” Radio expert James Cridland — whose blog post here tipped us to Dubber’s ideas — adds, “From my point of view, the problem isn’t that the technology doesn’t exist – it does; it’s the issue of user interface.” What do you think? Are Dubber’s ideas worth pursuing? Got any ideas of your own? Share your thoughts by commenting on today’s issue! share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
CommentCommenting is closed for this article.  Other stories RAIN has upgraded (and moved)! RAIN 9/13: RAIN Summit Chicago takes place today! RAIN 9/12: First Summit in RAIN's hometown takes place tomorrow RAIN 9/9: Summer holidays, "doldrums" impact July Webcast Metrics, but audience up over last year RAIN 9/8: Clear Channel launches new customizable iHeartRadio beta; RAIN goes hands-on RAIN 9/7: Meet more speakers you'll hear at RAIN Summit Chicago in less than a week RAIN 9/6: Clear Channel taps The Echo Nest to take on Pandora RAIN 9/2: RAIN reviews Spotify's radio-like product Artist Radio RAIN 9/1: UK online radio aggregator Radioplayer campaigns b'dcasters to create "all radio" ratings RAIN 8/31: Execs from Merlin, Triton Digital, jacAPPS and more to appear at RAIN Summit Chicago |
personalize your experience.
“[play] songs that you’ve played in the past, interspersed with songs other people with similar tastes have listened to,” at least according to Andrew Dubber. Dubber, who has a 
