• Reuters, Monday, July 2, 2007 11:15 AM

iLike, the fastest-growing digital music service on the planet, owes its surging popularity to Facebook. After integrating its music-sharing service into Facebook, iLike is now growing at a rate of 1 million new registered users per week. The social music site is also being taken far more seriously by record labels, who've opened discussion with it.

Indeed, for some developers of Web-based software programs, Facebook is making all the difference. Once a niche social networking site for college students, it first opened its doors to the greater Web in September and then opened its technology platform to software developers in May. Both moves have resulted in big-time growth for Facebook, while the latter is starting to pay huge dividends for third party developers like iLike, which doubled its traffic to 6.7 million users.

With the iLike-Facebook app, users share music preferences and receive customized iTunes playlists and personalized concert and music recommendations. Now, the service automatically syncs its services to your Facebook friends. "iLike is actually better on Facebook than as a stand-alone application," CEO Ali Partovi said.

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