A while ago there was an application called Mercora IM Radio that tried to mix real-time music streaming with social elements, creating a community of users around their favorite songs and bands.

Sure the idea rings you a bell – the popular Last.fm website is also based on this idea of mixing social communities and music. Following the successful trend of social networking sites, Mercora has now launched a completely revamped application under the name of Social.fm.

Social.fm works as a music player, MP3 manager and socializing desktop client. After registering for free, you start streaming music right away – and you can also listen to other people's music libraries. The program features a sleek, elegant dark interface, but it takes a while to get used to it due mainly due to overwhelming information. It even features a a Coverflow-style album cover browser and a playlist creation tool.

Music quality is quite good for an audio streaming service, with the odd pause for buffering as you could expect. As for social features, we couldn't fully test them because we had no friends (that is, on Social.fm) but you can invite friends by email or use the embedded user search tool. The program also features support for comments and Facebook and MySpace integration.

Social.fm is a social networking music manager that lets you stream music online and also discover new styles and bands by listening to other people's streaming radio stations.