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mercora

Lessons from Social.fm

I spoke with Mercora founder Srivats Simpath about three years ago as the company was looking for possible partnership opportunities with Microsoft. At the time, the company's vision and proposed business model seemed a little muddy. Music was involved. There would be some sort of peer-to-peer sharing system, but somehow this would be legal. To differentiate itself from the popular but illegal file-sharing systems used by most of the world at that time, Mercora would have a strong social-networking aspect, with users recommending or voting on songs. I don't remember exactly how the company expected to make money, … Read more

Music site Social.fm bites the dust

Social.fm, a music site that was known as Mercora until last year, has officially folded.

"We regret to inform you and apologize for this inconvenience, but Social.fm will be shutting down the system on July 31st, 2008," a message on the site read.

The shutdown was first reported by GigaOM.

Despite having raised $5 million in venture funding from Norwest Venture Partners and signing a deal with Microsoft, Social.fm never found its niche. It originally started out as a peer-to-peer Web radio and music search site, and CEO Srivats Sampath once made the dubious claim … Read more

Mercora has Web 2.0 makeover

The 4-year-old company Mercora has re-branded itself as Social.FM, which does two things: 1) Sounds appropriately Webware-ish and 2) explains what the service does right in the name.

Mercora used to be an Internet radio service, but then it launched a music-streaming service for smart phones, "M," last year. It had a $50-a-year subscription fee, but it allowed owners to stream music from their own PC to their phone, as well as access the music of up to five friends.

But now, it's free. And it is utilizing the Internet buzzword of the moment--social--to describe … Read more

Mercora updates M music service, scores Microsoft deal

Mercora has beefed up its streaming music service for smart phones, called M, and has snagged a deal with Microsoft to promote the service on its Windows Mobile site.

The service still offers more than 100,000 channels of music for streaming directly to any Windows Mobile 5 or 6 phone, but has added more than 7,000 podcast channels, CEO Srivats Sampath said.

Mercora will also be getting a temporary plug from Microsoft: Starting Tuesday, Microsoft will offer M as a free six-month subscription to all Windows Mobile users. The application can be downloaded from the Windows Mobile site … Read more