Pandora Builds Some Additions to their Box

Pandora has finally started to add some more social features to their radio product. Nothing earth-shattering (at least not yet) but they are good first steps....

Pandora: Everything starts with listening... some big changes at Pandora: "The new system is called Pandora Extras and it lets us place dynamic content and functionality alongside the music player. Tonight we're shipping four of these Extras:

• Now Playing: tells you all about the song, album, and artist you're hearing, recommends other similar songs and bands, and points you to other Pandora listeners that are fans.
  
• Friends: helps you keep tabs on all your friends that use Pandora so you can learn from their music discoveries. Find all your friends with a few clicks by importing your web mail address book.
  
• Genre Stations: lets you explore unfamiliar parts of the music universe by sampling over 100 genre stations.
  
• Pandora Presents...: features our new series of Pandora-produced podcasts and videos.
  

What's most exciting about this though is it's an entirely new palette for us to paint on; this is the beginning of a larger vision for Pandora. We've got all kinds of ideas for future 'Extras' to add to the system and what we're rolling out tonight gives us a flexible design that will allow us to add literally dozens of new options to compliment listening. It's a whole new world for us. There are a few other little things tucked into this release for you to enjoy as well. For example, you can now comment on album, artist, and song pages."