Merry Christmas iLike, Gcast, and GarageBand users and other music lovers (i.e future users). Actually, Christmas came a little early this year. On December 20th, 2006 iLike closed a $13.3 million dollar investment from TicketMaster! It is a high point in a way, but more importantly it is a launching pad for far greater things...like landing on the Moon on the way to Mars. We just had an offsite to plan our trajectory (shh, it's a secret) but I thought it would be interesting to survey what other people think we will or should do:

• Michael Arrington at Techcrunch is almost protective in his requests for restraint, which feels great since Techcrunch was one of our hardest to win over critics early on.
• On the other hand we've still got some more work to do with the crew at Idolator. They clearly chafe at Tickmaster's dominance of their space, they think our plug-in is bloated, and they think the deal is, uh (and I think they are being polite here), "curious".
  
• Paul Lamere does the math and arrives at a user base goal that is on the modest side of our aspirations: 1.4 million people.
• And last but not least my favorite, Rick Munarriz at the Motley Fool gives a brief history lesson on our trip to the Moon and recognizes the implication of that trip our launching pad for the stars.

Well, with $13.3 million in the bank and a great team on the ground, we hope to give y'all lots more to talk about in 2007, and even better stuff to listen to :)