MySpace announced this week that it was purchasing a music oriented social network called iLike. The acquisition was announced by CEO of MySpace Owen Van Natta Wednesday during a teleconference. The purchase involved not only the technology behind iLike, but the management team behind the company as well.

The most interesting aspect of the purchase is that iLike is currently used by about 10 million Facebook users – users on other social networks Bebo and Hi5 also rely on the iLike application. iLike is an application for social networks that allows the users to listen to music and recommends new artists that are similar to ones the users like. The website for iLike also hosts web pages for specific bands.

MySpace says that it plans to broaden the purview of iLike from music alone by adding movies and other content to the offerings. Natta said, "I would think that other social networks would be thrilled."

One other tie in for MySpace is the concert tickets sold on iLike; these could be used to boost the same sales of MySpace Music reports InformationWeek. MySpace has been working hard to regain its spot as the top social network that was taken by Facebook.

MySpace is also working to reduce its costs to make it more profitable. In June MySpace announced that it would be laying off 30% of its workforce, leaving it with about 1,000 employees in America. The iLike purchase is the first major deal that Natta has been responsible for since taking over the MySpace helm in April.

According to Natta, iLike will continue to be a separate entity with its own management team and will remain headquartered in Seattle.