ard the idea and promotion of social communities. Instead of separating the lives of people through reality and their online habits, the Internet is changing to provide a supplement to those who are in need of more communication and accessibility.

Different Web sites have incorporated different aspects of media and social quirks to create unique and creative ways to keep in touch. Last.fm is a site that incorporates the music you listen to and compares it to your friends in a social network setting.

Based out of the U.K., Last.fm acts as an evolving chart system using internet radio and statistics to determine music compatibility with other users and also recommend new artists based off of your tastes. Their chart system compiles listening information from their users on a weekly basis. From there they can determine what songs, albums or artists are being listened to the most.

Last.fm provides the ability to compare various musical tastes with others. Users can recommend new music based off the music they listen to and find information about artists.

A feature most students will be familiar with are groups. Last.fm allows for groups on their Web site. There is already a group titled, “Pullman Washington”. It consists of mostly WSU students and even some alumni. Senior computer science major, Scott Robinson, is the creator of group.

“The Pullman Washington community is for people who live in Pullman,” he said. “When you join the community, Last.fm shares our musical interests automatically and you can recommend artists and tracks to the community as a whole.” As of this week, the top tracks on Last.fm were Linkin Park’s “What I’ve Done” followed by their song “Bleed It Out”. The top song had more than 21,000 listeners while being played 86,000 times on computers. The top artist for the past month straight has been the Red Hot Chili Peppers followed by The Beatles.

Listening information is found by syndicating the song information through a plug-in that Last.fm said ‘scrobbles’ what a user is listening to at that time and then places it onto the user’s profile page. From there users can compare what they are listening to what their friends are listening to.

The next aspect of Last.fm is Internet radio. It’s done in a flash player on the Web site or through the plug-in on your computer that compiles various songs the site.

Katrina Burch, a history and anthropology major, is a frequent user of Last.fm. Burch’s most recently played songs consist of Josh Groban, Michael Buble and the Washington State University Singers.

“It’s awesome that I can listen to a radio without commercials and that has music I listen to as well,” she said. “The stations around here suck for me because I hate most of the music and Last.fm lets me listen to my types of music.”