Getting started - here are some initial concepts for you to react to

I love all 3 ideas, especially the 'Desert Island Discs' concept, however, I'd like to see more usage of the aggregated data.

For instance, what if there was a way to sort thru the 'genres' of music you listen to. With that you would see, for instance, that I listen to 'metal' as my most popular selection of music. But I slip in a Snoop Dogg song, as my 'guilty pleasure' tune. On my social page it would then show something to the effect of 'DID YOU SEE SCARY WAS LISTENING TO 'SEXUAL ERUPTION' FROM SNOOP DOGG'. Ya know, kinda calling you out. Hehe, that would be funny!

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Out ~Scary Aaron I'm Too Young For This .com Stupid Cancer! Cancer Sucks!

Music Trivia and song dedications would sound really nice. For song dedication, my first thought was that we would be given a song and then people from the social would vote for which famous person (or not famous person, for example "my mom") that this song represents. However, I could see how this could get a little messy so I'm sticking with music trivia

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"You can pay for school, but you can't buy class"
---Zuning since December 2007

I'm not sure how you would ever really know fact from fiction (it's the Internet, after all.) I've always believed in the honor system, but I've also seen it abused far too often. We might want to consider 'categories' of dedications (I might be getting too complex here) and work a contest or vote for 'best' dedication in each category and then an overall best from all of the combined categories? If a category is marked, 'Your Best Fiction', it might keep the other ones clean?

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Careful, I bite...and in all the right places!

 jetherealz wrote:

Here are some ideas for you to react to.

Desert Island Discs - maybe some kind of voting on which albums are best; could do it by genre, year, etc

Music Trivia - All kinds of music-related questions, maybe include listening to song clips and guessing the song

Theme song - The ability to publicly dedicate a theme song to a friend (like, dedicate "My Favorite Mistake" by Sheryl Crow to your boyfriend/girlfriend... ha ha!)

I like the music trivia and theme song idea, but both of these ideas are far too similar to one of Facebook's application (iLike) where you see how well you know various songs compared to your friends. One suggestion to modify the music trivia idea is have the ability for users to create their own "quizzes" using songs that are in your Zune library to see how well your friends know your music, or at least have it as an option.

Also, for the Zune Profile page, I personally think that the "favorites" and "recently played songs" widgets on the right seem kind of redundant since it is already available in the Zune Card. Those sidebar items could be replaced with some of the suggestions you and others have proposed, so the Zune profile page doesn't turn into another over clutter Facebook/MySpace page. Or if you prefer to keep those widgets on the page, consider putting those widgets in a tab (similar to the Zune Card). For example,  this concept I whipped up (but of course not as rough as my concept): http://shadowsillusion.com/zune/ZuneProfile-CombinedWidgets.jpg

Another idea for Zune.net profile page is a widget that is similar to Amazon's Wish List, but one for upcoming albums people are waiting for.

Anyways, I have a lot of different (and some random) ideas, but if I can muster up the time to post them, I will try to do so before Friday.

- Julian

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My Zune FAQs My Personal Blog

More incorporation into the general Windows Live identity would be a much needed step, before any applications or graphical front-ends are developed, to what the Zune social already has. What a user does, as far as their musical habits and musical identity, should be incorporated into the MSN and Xbox Live networks. The Zune card should be accessible, to some degree, from both of these already well-established networks. This way the users really feel "integrated" with the Zune Social, and are more willing to actively participate in it.
Also. Any kind of game that is incorporated into The Social, should be immediately integrated with one's peers. Say a Music Trivia game is developed. Users should be able to either actively engage their friends, or compare their points in a Leaderboard to their friends; this gives the game an aspect of competition either way.
Friends should always be the primary focus in developing any new application or game, to utilize the already existing music profile. Perhaps individuals should be allowed to have a favorite band, favorite song, favorite album, description, ect. A game could be developed with this, in which one could try and guess the identity of the mystery friend, given the name of the favorite song of the mystery friend.

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- Mike Wi-Fi Enhancements on the Zune Platform

Oooh! Something you said triggered a thought for me - I'm totally with you on the "focus on friends" thing and I liked your idea of the "mystery friend." Let me take that a step further: what if we allowed users to create a quiz about themselves and their musical taste, experiences, etc - then people could take your quiz and learn more about you?

So, we'd build an interface that let users create multiple-choice questions and note which is the correct answer. So I could create something like this:

1. Once upon a time, the theme song I had for my boyfriend was:

a - "My Favorite Mistake" by Sheryl Crow

b - "Nothing But You" by Paul van Dyk

c - "Hard to Handle" by the Black Crowes

And you all know it would be "a" based on my babble above. :-)

Would that be fun? It would definitely be unique and totally socially-oriented, two goals of the game...

(And as far as your other comment re: Windows Live integration - remember this is about containment and boundaries, something we can create now without cross-group dependencies. Please don't think for a minute that we don't care about Windows Live and other MS products and services - we totally do, but this project isn't about that.)

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Jessica Zahn, Zune Social Program Manager ~ This posting is provided as-is with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I'm not sure this is what you're thinking about but how about some sort of battle of the bands competition.

Have it divided into brakets.  maybe have a topic and have two people go up against each other pick a song that fits the topic the best(like the game apples to apples). Winner decided by the community vote and moves on to the next round.

Following from omahabrad above, how about a contest where a funny/wierd/off-beat picture is posted and users suggest a song for the title/caption. The community could then vote on the best suggestion.

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If Music be the food of Love...then FEAST!

 omahabrad wrote:

I'm not sure this is what you're thinking about but how about some sort of battle of the bands competition.

Have it divided into brakets.  maybe have a topic and have two people go up against each other pick a song that fits the topic the best(like the game apples to apples). Winner decided by the community vote and moves on to the next round.

Basically, I'm talking about the concept in which a user developes a Zune social identity, by making their musical identity accesible to their friends via trivia/quiz games built right into the site. I like jetherealz idea better than my own, actually. Allowing users to create quizes about themselves, using the data already on their acccount, would be a very nice touch. Perhaps the two concepts could be featured as two different games. In one, you'd guess the identity of your friends, and in the other you'd be able to take personalized quizzes, made by your friends.
Battle of the Bands is also a great idea. Any game featured, should also accomodate a points system, and comparative leaderboard with one's friends. Like on Xbox Live, the friend's leaderboards often lead to healthy competition between friends. It's like the old days in which an entire dorm room would battle it out for the high-score on the local gaming console. Now, we have the ability to do the same thing, except with everyone on the network being able to compete.

Also. One feature that could be looked into, would be the ability to customize your page with a description, location, and custom links like Facebook, Digg, ect. One could also upload videos and blog pages to your page from various media sites. Any embedded video should be able to be embedded in a user's profile. All sites should be allowed, except for a specific black list determined by the administrators of such a feature.
That way, your friends can see what you like on YouTube, eBaum's, Metacafe, MySpace Video, ect.
Blog integration would also be a nice feature. Or better yet, a Zune Social blog.

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- Mike Wi-Fi Enhancements on the Zune Platform

Sorry to Double-post. I just came to the realizion of a very big damper in the Zune social network. I just read that the Zune social only records the metatag info of songs played, to a user's account, from .mp3's. I didn't read into .wma's, but I know that .m4a's aren't supported. This must be fixed. There's no reason that the Zune software can't report the ID3 tag information of a perfectly legitmate AAC file that matches with the AMG music guide, to the Zune Social. The Zune device supports AAC. The Zune software supports AAC. There's no reason that the Zune software can't. Last.fm even handles AAC files in adding them to a profile. This makes it so that over 90% of my song plays aren't recorded to my profile.
Not having this support excluded alot of users, and prevents some people from truly enjoying the Social, to their fullest. All supported audio codecs supported in the Zune software with supported ID3 tag info, should be reported to a user's Zune profile, upon the completion of a song, either in the software, or the docking of the Zune device.
I know this sounds off-topic, but it isn't, because a large majority of the possible games, and graphical utilities that you're currently looking into, rely on the data added to a user's profile by either the user, or the Zune software.

To read the issue I've posted to the wishlist, here's the original post:
http://forums.zune.net/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=161270

Thank you.

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- Mike Wi-Fi Enhancements on the Zune Platform

I like the idea of dedicating songs. And the idea of personal music quizes is pretty genius, we would all have fun checking each others music knowlege. If it was going to be some kind of blanket music trivia game, it would be fun to do some sort of seven degrees, trying to connect random artists or band musically. Look at how many artists move around to other projects, or do duets, or just remake songs done before.

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Two guys walk into a bar, the first one looks at the second one and says... "You didn't see it either?"

I'm liking the music trivia... and I voted in your poll thread :)