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

Okay, let's go! Sounds like there are a bunch of you out there who want to play. And "play" is one of the things I want to accomplish.

So, first we need a concept. I want to build some kind of fun activity or game for The Social. In my mind, it would need to be:

• Sticky - something that makes users want to come back
• Viral - users want to share it with their friends
• Fun - duh
• Leverages our strengths - we have so much usage data, it would be cool if we could figure out how to use it for something fun
• Also, we can't do anything that requires changes in the software or the device; that's out of scope for this project.

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!)

Let's talk about this from now until Friday; by then I'd like to try to come to a consensus on what game or activity we want to create. So please post your ideas, thoughts, comments, whatever here.

Two quick reminders:

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

Hey Jessica...

These are very cool ideas you're starting us out with here...  I like the Music Trivia and the Theme song ideas the best... so first:

Music Trivia -- in addition to listening to the song clips and trying to guess the song... it would be fun to guess the year the song first came out, who the original artist(s) were and then all those who have done covers and/or their own interpretations of the song(s), whether the song has been used in a movie/tv show, has the song been used in any commercials, or has a particular phrase from the song become part of our everyday slang and/or sayings, (the song... "'Walking On Sunshine" comes to mind as I think it was later in some commercials...?), and maybe some really arcane facts about the artist/group who first wrote the songs... like any personal facts about their lives and/or characters... 

Theme Songs -- this would be very cool... so maybe there could be a public forum on here where we could dedicate songs to our family members, friends and/or boyfriends/girlfriends... not sure if by "public" you meant outside of the Zune forums here... like possibly on radio stations ?  If so, not sure how that would be accomplished...  it would be nice in the public forum to be able to post a photo of the person who we're dedicating the song to... and keep it like 250 x 250 pixels so that we wouldn't bust whatever bandwidth you all have for these forums...  and maybe we could even dedicate songs to our pets... as I have several songs I sing to my "baby" cat... and put her name in all the right places of course... LOL ! 

I too would like there to be some fun games on here... and have researched "Forum Games" but haven't been able to find any that we don't already have in our Off Topic area... and some of the ones I have seen are kinda dumb... so I'm not sure how else to do further research on this topic...     I do know one thing and that's that Zune already has a great start w/the Social... and all of the current forums... it's really fun to come here and hang out w/many of the people I've met on here...  Ah... and that makes me think of a possible future forum... of where we can talk about anything in life... (keeping it appropriate of course), maybe like a "Getting To Know You" thread... different from the "Meet and Greet" where everyone knows that they can share parts of their lives and get advice... opinions... and empathy/sympathy... or some encouragement...  We have this on the Sims2 forum I am a member of and it's really awesome...  We've all feel like we are truly friends and are "there" for each other through all the trials and travails that each of us experience in our lives...  So, just a thought and I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with here ! 

Wolves A Courting... 

Living by Faith not by sight... +

Luther Vandross Forever!

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

No, I like where you're headed. One of the things I would rather us NOT do would be copy someone else's game, and I know on Facebook through iLike you can dedicate songs to people. So if we did that, we'd need to think of how it would be different - I love the idea of having more to it, pictures, voting, etc. Maybe users would be able to tell a story along with it.

Ooh, I thought of something fun! Once there's critical mass of dedicated songs, it might be fun to see who else dedicated that song to someone, and what their story was!

(See, I said I was joking when I mentioned dedicating "My Favorite Mistake" to a boyfriend...but, uh, I kind of did, once upon a time, in a karoke bar...to my boyfriend...who I eventually married! So I'd be interested in seeing other people's "Favorite Mistake" dedications.)

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

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

LOL... well Ms. Jessica it looks like you've already got a great story... for "My Favorite Mistake"...  how funny that you actually did this and had such a great result !  I too wanna know if your hubby "thinks" he is your favorite mistake...? 

The critical mass idea is cool... and I would love to see who else dedicated the same song but possibly for diff reasons... and hear their story as well... this is FUN ! 

Wolves A Courting... 

Living by Faith not by sight... +

Luther Vandross Forever!

How about music that made a physical impact, or ironic  moment in your life.

Examples:

I watched my friend get pulled over in my driveway while listening to Breaking The Law by Judas Priest on my front porch for all including the cop to hear.

I got pulled over and taken to jail for an unpaid parking ticket while jamming to Prison Bound by Social Distortion.

These examples in no way reflect occurrences in my life

If it doesn't work try a bigger hammer.

I agree with the ideas posted so far, and in fact had thought about starting a song dedication thread for Valetine's day, but got side tracked . I definately agree with the request to be able to post pictures, albeit dependent upon bandwidth needs. One of my ideas would be some sort of contest with giveaways, ie a free song download, a Zune background/wallpaper or maybe an icon that can be displayed on the users forum Zune Tag denoting they are a contest winner.

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

Uh, yeah, my husband knows. We're over it. :-)

I like the idea of a contest - voting on the best story/dedication - but would that encourage fiction writers to go crazy? Does that matter?

Part of the appeal of dedications and stories for me is to help build community - we get to know each other better that way, right. I'm sure people heard about that contest for Hannah Montana tickets, where the girl who won said her father died in Iraq or something, and really he didn't? I would really not want to encourage people to make stuff up just to be funny/poignant/etc - unless that was the point, and for me I don't think it should be.

Does anyone have ideas on how we could combine dedications with some kind of contest or game?

(And as always, new ideas are still welcome...this whole week we'll debate and play with ideas before coming to a consensus.)

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

Oh Snap!

Hold your breath someone is about to tell the greatest lie EVER!

 CT2049 wrote:

Is this suppose to be something for zune.net or is it a widget that would be across multiple site (like a facebook app version, a myspace widget version, etc..)?

Something for Zune.net, but who knows - we've got stuff on FB, we have a Zune myspace - we could think about ways to integrate there, too. At minimum we create something for this site.

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