Today we launched a feature to help you find your friends on Last.fm. It makes finding friends from Facebook or contacts from your email address book super easy. We think a more social Last.fm is a more fun Last.fm, where you can see what your friends are listening to, send them recommendations, compare tastes and more.
You can find friends from Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. We’ve already had lots of feedback from people that would like Twitter and Hotmail added to that list and we’ll be looking at them (and others) in the future. There’s also a new feature that will suggest users you might know, based on the friends of your friends.
(If you’re a long time user then you might remember we had a friend finding tool some years ago. It had a habit of sending a few too many emails, sometimes in the wrong language and was a bit rubbish.)
Managing privacy has been a priority for us with friend finding; during early testing we unearthed a few secret staff accounts (packed with guilty pleasure scrobbling) and I even found one of my parent’s secret test accounts (presumably trying to see what this online music website hoo-hah was all about). In both of these cases the user wasn’t expecting to be found, and that’s the kind of thing we’re hoping to avoid.
It’s difficult to strike a balance between privacy and making a useful friend finder, but we think we’ve found middle ground.
- There’s a new privacy setting where you can opt out of appearing in results at all.
- By default your account will appear in results and a friend request can be sent, but we won’t show your username or profile; basically other people will only know that you have an account, not what your account is.
If you then choose to become friends after getting a friend request it’s then that they’ll get to see your account. Speaking of friend requests…
We’ve also given friend request emails some lovin’; they’ll tell you a bit more – like your musical compatibility or which friends you have in common – to help you decide if you want to be friends.
I’m also happy we got this new feature in front of some users to get their feedback and incorporate it into our work at an early stage. Your feedback is invaluable to us and helps us build a better Last.fm for everyone. This is hopefully going to be the start of more regular beta versions of new features, so watch this space.
Comments
LaHaine
13 July, 16:52
I don’t like the Opt-Out, I prefer Opt-In.
Liza
13 July, 17:17
Tumblr too? xoxo
Coen
13 July, 17:29
Damn, why is hotmail never included?
Francisco
13 July, 17:30
Greeeeeat!
yourstarlight
13 July, 17:49
Love how the old friend finder is described as “a bit rubbish” in case there were any doubt this was a British company :)
Jörg
13 July, 18:11
oh yes, tumblr would be awesome!
Daryl
13 July, 18:35
Thanks for this! I’ve been waiting a while. Definitely looking forward to Twitter and Hotmail support.
badgene
13 July, 18:54
I’m loving the last.fm-based friend finder. However, it would be infinitely more useful if it could show who the common friends actually are.
mp3 indir
13 July, 18:55
This was very good. thanks
David Ewing
13 July, 21:22
First, why would anybody still use a Hotmail email address? It’s the spammiest provider. Second will this integrate into Google’s plus one profiles when they become available?
Tommy Carstensen
13 July, 22:08
“Will this integrate into Google’s plus one profiles when they become available?”
No, you only grant last.fm access to your Google contacts. This access is permanent until you revoke it manually from your Google account, if you decide to do so.
PP Shivaknen
14 July, 03:12
Unfortunately, gmail activation doesn’t work…., :-(
What’s wrong?
DutchViking
14 July, 06:39
finally!!! have been waiting since the old ‘bit rubbish’ Finder was removed! My network will at least triple over the next few days.
thanks!!
Gustavo Abreu
14 July, 11:20
What about Tumblr, Twitter and Hotmail?
mac jordan
14 July, 12:34
What’s the point? Until you fix the iPhone scrobbling problem, I’m effectively not using Last.FM
Olly
15 July, 17:33
Everytime I try and use the Google friend finder I get the below error after granting access on the Google page, also the auth doesn’t appear in Google’s list of sites:
The service is overloaded or offline. Please try again later.
qrobur
16 July, 06:29
Add your friends and do what? Share 30 second clips of music or let them listen to a radio supposedly based on your library but probably based on whatever CBS thinks should be pushed at people?
Yawn. No thank you.
juepucta
16 July, 23:30
I demand to know if the Hoff is really on Last and if he will friend me.
-G.
Bocan
24 July, 22:49
Still a bit rubbish. It found 80 people for me, but over 75% of those are people who might have made an account years ago and never came back.
Without having some idea of the last time those people logged in or scrobbled a song I won’t add them as a friend. It’s embarrassing to befriend non-active users.
Oz
27 July, 10:55
it is not working. i have friends in my facebook / yahoo list that have last.fm but i can’t find them with this friend finder.
angelsheart85
29 July, 12:14
this is awesome and helpful! Thanx
Thom
29 July, 17:14
cool idea, my only critique is that it shows you your friends but doesn’t let you click to their profile. Adding links to the profile would make this 1000x times better.
(i used gmail search)
hiimichael93
29 July, 17:44
Why isn’t tumblr or hotmail included in this?
Also it would help if it actually worked, it’s not working with me right now.
Sarah Poynor
29 July, 18:11
Twitter, Tumblr, Hotmail please
stayxcold
29 July, 18:38
Fuck this, let me scrobble from Zune.
Jew
30 July, 06:50
Opt-in option plz! I’ve unticked that option but a banner asking me to ‘try it now’ still keeps bugging me. Anyway, white people problems.
whatever
30 July, 13:11
i don’t want to be found. change it please!
Mystogan
31 July, 01:55
What I really want is scrobble from Zune. It may be Microsoft not opening up their software, I don’t know, but you’re on the Xbox so let’s see if you can partner up and get Zune and the Last.fm scrobbler talking together (like every other media player out there).
Samba145
31 July, 22:41
To: Mystogan and stayxcold
You can scrobble from your Zunes
Use Zenses2 (http://sixones.com/projects/zenses/) to scrobble from the mp3 player itself. There’s a few glitchy bits but nothing that can’t be solved by reading the help forums
And Zuse (https://bitbucket.org/wiz/zuse/downloads/) to scrobble tracks played on your Zune Software
Where there’s a will there’s a way. hope this helps.
Ryan
1 August, 00:38
I would also really appreciate Tumblr being added as well!
Helena
1 August, 19:22
This might be a stupid question, but how exactly does this work? Someone ‘found’ me yesterday via Facebook, but I use two different usernames and email addresses for both sites and haven’t connected my accounts in any way. It’s a bit scary ._.
NINa
2 August, 10:01
I’d rather prefer the recommendation script show the most super compatible or very compatible friends than the results based on mutual friends. The mutual friends are very low compatible to my music taste and listen to completely different music so why should I get friends with? ;)
PhilMcHawk
3 August, 15:18
@mac jordan For iPhone scrobbling look up an app called iScrob.
/yourlifeproblem
Dan
3 August, 15:37
Facebook connect not working…..
Korey Fort
4 August, 05:10
I thought this thing was going to be a lot better than what it was. Instead of finding I have on facebook to connect to last.fm only, it should also do the opposite. Find friends I have on last.fm and connect me to their facebook page.
Ted Pavlic
5 August, 14:35
Last.FM chokes on my Google Contacts (i.e., after receiving the auth token from Google, the Last.FM page comes up blank). I guess I have too many of them. LinkedIn’s friend finder has a similar problem, and LinkedIn’s engineers (who actually accept bug reports, unlike Last.FM) discovered a bug in their importer after asking me to send them a CSV export of my Google Contacts. I’m guessing there’s a similar bug in Last.FM.
So I guess I’m limited to Facebook and Yahoo contacts on Last.FM. That’s too bad because most of my contacts are in Google…
gerbersteph
5 August, 20:00
what about friends from hotmail? yes some of us STILL use hotmail! :)
mich-fm
7 August, 10:35
how about hotmail addings??
Pei
9 August, 11:12
google mail connect not working…
Ravish
12 August, 05:57
how to change the username in last.fm……………
paulo
13 August, 20:18
<3
Matt
14 August, 11:11
Include hotmail in the next update please! maybe even Twitter!
Thanks!
Sam
15 August, 02:10
Freaking HATE facebook and its ilk, and Opt-IN is the only polite way to enact these kinds of features.
last.fm subscriber and LOVE the site, but don’t count on my $$ if you spew my data out to every #&%# SNS that comes sniffing. Damn.
Comments are closed for this entry.