Even w/ all my talk about Web 2.0, I’ve neglected to join the social sites that are defining this revolution. I’ve done bookmarking at del.icio.us as well as tagging my blog entries for Technorati, but until this point I’ve avoided participating in the direct social sites.

Well, I’ve jumped head-first into last.fm. It makes the most sense for me right now. I don’t have a huge network of friends where I’d benefit from something like Myspace, although I do have to start an account so I can contact an old friend that I found recently. I’ve never been a poster, or a commenter for all the blogs and Digg articles I’ve read. I guess I’ve been more concerned about the backend of the sites rather than what they were for. Enough of that.

last provides a download that plugs in to your media player (iTunes, WMP, WinAmp, etc.) and monitors what you’re playing. You’re given a set of tools that allow you to tag your tracks/albums and artists. Once you’ve started a free account your playlist of recent tracks shows on your overview page. Here’s where it gets social. You can see what other random people are playing at the moment. You can search for what others have played or are playing based on tags. The tags can be yours as well as theirs. This allows you to see possible artists that you may not have known about in your favorite genre, or you can discover styles of music you weren’t aware of.

You can contact these people and build your social music network. You can also join or build a group of people based on a particular music style, a label, an artist(s), or whatever you feel. You’re able to post blog entries about the music and message people in your group. So far I have no friends, but I’m starting to invite some people to join, and I think I’m going to get my present AIO class to build a group so we can all see what we’re listening to for inspiration while working on the web.

The FM part is based on your tags as well. As you build a foundation you create radio stations based on your favorite music genres. Now you can listen to your custom radio that streams music from your tag styles so you can hear many different artists that others have tagged as such! All artists/albums are clickable and are linked to Amazon if you want to purchase the music.

I’m sure I could’ve done a better job at describing the site, but I just joined less than 24 hrs ago, so give me a break! My username is: Artboredom and I’m building my tags steadily since then.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, social sites, bookmarking, last.fm,