To date, I've avoided social networking sites like My Space, twitter and, until recently, facebook. However, that all changed today with me joining facebook and incorporating iLike into my facebook page for the sole purpose of discovering new music.

Finding New Music

Today Dave and I were discussing the difficulty of finding new music that I like. My current usage pattern is that I use the iTunes store to find music, typically by browsing by genre, and then I head over to Zune Marketplace to actually purchase the music. But when I think socially about how I explore music, it's usually through friends, coworkers and customers that mention in passing some piece of music they have really enjoyed - and is typically the more accurate method of finding stuff I really like.

In both cases, my Zune Pass makes it really easy to sample the music and listen to it indefinitely on my Zune or purchase it outright if I want to keep it forever.

And, in both cases, neither is ideal. Maybe social networking in a Web 2.0 world is the right answer ...

Enter iLike

In the context of my conversation with Dave and one of the members of the Zune team, the subject of facebook and iLike came up. iLike is a social networking site that works with the published favorites of others to cross-sell recommendations on music for you. And it plugs directly into facebook. iLike links directly to the iTunes store so you can purchase the music directly and is fantastic if you're an avid purchaser of music from iTunes. Unfortunately, there's no support for Zune Marketplace ... but just the discovery of music relationships via artists, albums and songs is sufficient for me to find the music on Zune Marketplace and expand my personal library.

Join Me on facebook

So, come on over and join me on facebook! Make sure to add the iLike application to your facebook page and let's share our music preferences. I'm anxious to see what else is out there that I'm missing.