Audioscrobbler
May 4, 2005The site Audioscrobbler is something like an Orkut with music. It has all the basic features of social networking: you add friends, share information, participate in discussion groups and communities. The twist is that you may download a plugin for your audio player and your profile will automatically be populated with the songs you are listening, preferred artists, musics and albums.
After having a few songs in the profile, you may then visualize your "neighbours" by musical taste. The system also compares what you listen with what everyone else listen, allowing it to suggest some new artists that may be of interest to the user. A very clever and useful way of using social networks.
A funny, and somewhat novel, aspect of the system is that it allows different kinds of relations with your contacts. You may grow an enemies network, if you wish. Relations are totally personalized in the form of a relation function such as "X is very friend of Y" or "X wants to breed ninja turtles with Y". It may not be useful or practical, but surely is amusing to add contacts this way.