Mercora, a social music discovery service has announced a name change – Social.FM. Similar to services like Last.fm, Social.FM helps users find new music through their social network. User profiles include a “DJ Rank” based on the number of hours people have listened to their station, “charts” showing your recent songs and artists, and basic social networking features like friends and comments. In addition to its web site and downloadable application, Social.FM also offers a subscription service for Windows Mobile for listening to your playlists on the go.
When we first reviewed Mercora a little more than a year ago, Pete Cashmore wrote that it was “unclear on what Mercora wants to be” and that still appears to be the case. While today’s announcement was mostly about their re-branding, the new URL Social.FM simply re-directs to the Mercora.com domain, and Mercora name remains all over the site. This company still has a lot of work to do if it wants to be competitive with established leaders like Last.fm and Pandora.