Bono gets jiggy with the Facebook
Maybe it’s the future of music and maybe it’s not, but I think U2’s experiment with Facebook and the iLike widget is a pretty interesting move. As CNET points out, Bono is involved with Elevation Partners, and one of the board members there is also on the board of iLike — and Valleywag’s Megan McCarthy notes that the connections are even more intertwined than just that if you look closer — but nevertheless, I think it’s a great idea.
The song is a preview of a tune called Waves of Sorrow, and it’s a nice long clip of Bono talking about the inspiration for the song and then kind of singing along and talking about it as he sings it. I admit that I’m a U2 fan (although the Bono “saviour of the world” act gets a little thin at times), but in any case I think it’s a pretty interesting use of Facebook.
After just three days of being up on Facebook’s iLike page and available to be added to users’ iLike widgets (and displayed in their feeds, of course) the song has more than 1.3 million fans, and there are over 9,000 wall posts. Will Bono be reading each one? Somehow I doubt it. In other iLike news, Billboard reports that the company has signed a deal for exclusive content with Keith Urban.
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hey this is Ali from iLike.
Just wanted to correct a couple of factual errors. First, Elevation Partners is not an investor in iLike.
Second, they did not post the song "on Facebook," but rather "on iLike," which syndicates content to fans across multiple platforms including Facebook.
Lastly, U2 already had over 1.1 million fans on iLike *before* they posted the clip. Most major artists now reach more fans on iLike than on Myspace, in part because iLike is "syndicated" across multiple platforms.
Thanks, Ali -- I corrected the Elevation investment error after someone from Elevation emailed me to point that out. My bad. And your other points are good ones as well -- I should have made it clear that iLike is more than just a Facebook widget.