Pandora Adds Social Features
As mentioned in the morning reboot, music sharing service Pandora has added some nice “social” features. Previously user profiles were limited to bookmarked songs, but as of today users can now list bio information, leave comments, bookmark other users and create artist lists.
In the past Pandora was somewhat limited in its sharing tools. You’ve always been able to email station to friends whether or not they were Pandora members, but there weren’t many tool for interacting with other Pandora users. The focus of the site was clearly on the music and search tools.
While the focus of Pandora hasn’t radically shifted, the new features do put some additional emphasis on Pandora users and community, rather than just services.
All the new profile features come with privacy controls, users can set their profiles public or private and turn comments on and off. It would nice if Pandora had an option to control the privacy of comments rather than just turning them on and off, for instance perhaps an option to allow trusted users to comment but block everyone else. Unfortunately that isn’t currently possible.
In addition to the new profile features, there’s also a couple of new search possibilities that let you find other users with similar tastes. When you find another user with a station that fits your musical taste, you can add that person by clicking the blue “bookmark this person” button on their profile page (assuming their profile is public).
While not exactly revolutionary, the new features bring Pandora more in line with competitors like last.fm and give yet another way to discover new music. Of all the services I reviewed last month for Wired, Pandora continues to deliver the most exciting and varied recommendations.
