Music site Social.fm bites the dust
Monday, August 4th, 2008
Social.fm, a music site that was known as Mercora until last year, has officially folded. The shutdown was first reported by GigaOM.
“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.
Despite having raised $5 million in venture funding from Norwest Venture Partners and signing a deal with Microsoft, Social.fm never found its niche. Originally starting out as a peer-to-peer Web radio and music search site, Mercora CEO Srivats Sampath once made the dubious claim that his company “beat Steve Jobs to the iPhone” by letting users share music wirelessly through its smartphone-based “M” service.
With its makeover as Social.fm, Mercora cut its subscription fees and focused more on social music. But significantly larger competitors in the space–Pandora, Last.fm, Imeem, iLike–Social.fm’s traffic tumbled, and the site was formally closed last week.
Disclaimer: Social.fm competitor Last.fm is owned by CBS Interactive, parent company of CNET News.
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Music site Social.fm bites the dust
