Last.fm bought by CBS for 280 million dollars http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6701863.stm Friend of mine knows the guys who started it, nice bunch of folk by all accounts. My friend said last time he popped over to their place "they looked like a bunch of rabbits caught in car headlights" .... "ah, that would explain it" my friend noted when I sent him the link to the BBC page :-) Mark Mark Gaved Knowledge Media Institute The Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes, UK MK7 6AA http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/mark -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org on behalf of Andrea Forte Sent: Wed 5/30/2007 11:41 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] last.fm group It actually doesn't surprise me that people put that much effort into gaming Last. I'm into music and I pay attention to music likes/dislikes on soc networking sites. In Judith Donath's terminology, Last seems to me as a music lover to be more of an assessment signal for music tastes--and one of the few available online to identify like-minded listeners. Far more difficult to misrepresent one's tastes than with the conventional signaling associated with free-text profiles in myspace, facebook, etc. Andrea