Last.fm launches new Beta Features

What is Last.fm?

Last.fm a UK-based Internet radio and music community website founded in 2002. It claims over 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).

Using a music recommendation system called “Audioscrobbler,” Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s computer or some portable music devices.  The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user’s favorites.

Last.fm is allows you create your own custom playlist and radio stations from any music in the Last.fm library.  You can easily listen, bookmark, organize, and share your favorite music and playlists with friends.

Goal of New Beta Features

Three main concepts driving the UI and feature development for this next-generation Last.fm are: play music, share music and add music, according to Last.fm’s Hannah Donovan. We’ve focused on making these three things easier for everyone to enjoy, even your mum.

Highlighted Features

• New music player was added to very page making music easily accessible.
• New music drop down menu includes: share music, love track, add tags, add to playlist.
• Username drop down menu on top right corner: home, profile, recommended, library, events, inbox, and settings.
• New version allows users to manually add songs and artists to their libraries in addition to having them added automatically.  You can now expand your music collection purely through Last.fm.
• New Activity feed let’s you see what all your friends are listening to, real-time music popularity charts and podcasts.
• New Library photo mash up with the following header tabs:
  Music | Loved tracks | Playlists | Tags

Overall, I believe the new Last.fm beta version is much more user friendly, and the new features are superb.  It may take some time to adjusted to the new layout, but it already seems easier to use.  If you are not already my friend on Last.fm,  feel free to add me at:
http://www.last.fm/user/guillebravo6.

WTF? Digg’s Recommendation Engine at Worst

I was browsing around the upcoming section and I saw this 3 Day Old submission with 596 Diggs still in the upcoming section.  Every since the release of the new Recommendation Engine, Digg’s algorithm has been completely screwed up, but I’m sure you have noticed.  Below is a screen shot of the story in the upcoming section.

I’m not sure what the Digg developers are doing, but in the past stories were limited to 24 hours to hit front page.  Hopefully Digg will make some updates to their new Recommendation Engine so the quality of front page stories is better.  Front page stories are still very biased lately focusing on apple, technology, iPhone, politics, economy, gaming, and more.  Below is a screen shot of the actual submission, showing its 3 days old.

The goal of the Recommendation Engine was to provide new submissions to users based on their previous diggs.  I was looking in my upcoming section and I am not impressed with the Recommendation Engine.  I usually surpass the recommendation engine and view all upcoming stories instead.  Digg  should give you the option to disable the Recommendation Engine if you are not satisfied with its features.

StumbleUpon’s new “View Recent Shares” feature

Here is a look at the fairly new “View Recent Shares” feature presented by Stumbleupon. It can be found by going to your Stumbleupon inbox, and looking directly above your messages. You will see the link to your “recent shares” section which has the latest items shared to you by your Stumbleupon mutual friends.

Below is a screen shot of the “recent shares” feature live.  I personally like this feature because it allows you to see your recent shares in an organized fashion, similar to the DIGG’s shout feature, but more organized.  Hopefully we don’t see an influx of Spammers with launch of this new feature. Enjoy

The features logs all shares from mutual friends.  You can look at past shares if you’ve forgotten, or bypassed them when they were initially shared.  Sometimes, my mutual friends share stories with me and I have time to read the article but not submit a review and give it thumbs up if I liked it.  This is a good way to keep history of old shares and finish your review when its convenient.  I hope you enjoyed this post, and keep on stumbling!