Music discovery and social
networking site MyStrands has undergone a
re-vamp. It includes better integration between the online, mobile and physical worlds; excellent new mobile features including a mobile Web portal and personalized radio station; new
navigation on the site; and a personal version of partyStrands, their service for party organizers,
bars, clubs and DJs.
MyStrands is based on
"behavior-based recommendation technologies" and their services allow people to organize and
discover digital music and other media, through Internet connected devices (computers,
mobile devices, etc). With the re-vamp, the mobile side of MyStrands has been
significantly strengthened, with new support for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices,
along with a new mobile Web portal to help users network and discover music. There are
also a couple of new Flash-built services - music charts and radio - plus a tie-in with
Napster.
In detail, the new features being released today in MyStrands are:
- New MyStrands Mobile Web Portal - allows you to find and interact with partyStrands parties at bars, let's you see what your friends are listening to and helps you organize and discover new music through recommendations, tags and the community.
- MyStrands for Symbian - support for Nokia Series 60 mobile phones; features music player, playlist builder and music recommender.
- MyStrands for Windows Mobile
- new embeddable flash music charts for MySpace, Blogger and LiveJournal - lets you tell your social network what you are listening to on your computer, cell phone or iPod.
- new personalized flash Indie radio - this radio doesn't have many of the restrictions that commercial online radio has; e.g. you can skip back and forth as many times as you want, rate and track your ratings, tag songs, and download them if the artist permits it.
- hook-in with Napster, giving users 2.5 million commercial full-length songs to listen to for free (registration required at Napster.com, only valid in the USA).
Personalized Radio
Regarding the personal version of partyStrands, it claims to give users the ability to "host parties" from their PC. In essence it is a personal DJ and it works with iTunes, WMP and Winamp (a Mac version is coming soon). This has the potential to be very popular with the youth set, because it enables them to interact at parties and clubs via their mobile phones. For example partygoers can choose the evening's music by using their cell phones, or find a party, or even join a party from their home via phone. The system can also integrate with users existing social network profiles (e.g. MySpace, MyStrands, Last.fm). partyStrands works with all operators in USA (except t-mobile), and Spain. Users in the rest of the world can interact with partyStrands via mobile web at m.MyStrands.com.
Probably the best part of all this is the increased ability for users to find music and network with their friends via their mobile phones. This really is showing the way for online-mobile-offline integration, so congratulations to MyStrands for ramping it up.
Here are some more screenshots of the new features in partyStrands:
