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

 PassMcNasty wrote:

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.

I LOVE this entire idea... as it's very similar to what I have as a Sims player on my Sim Page on the official website... w/the description, location, blog and guestbook -- we don't have custom links but it sure would be awesome to have that option here on our personal Zune pages...  Our description is called: My Profile and has these items... Name (Screen Name), Page Name, Member Since: (Date), Location, Interests (Hobbies, Musical tastes, etc...), About Me, (We're allowed to say if we have any religious beliefs or not - Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or w/e, marital status, kids/pets, high school/college/professions, and general things of interest...), Country, BBS Rank - Voluble VIP, Community Rank - Pollination Technician, Games Owned -- (This could be Zunes owned...)  : )   We're able to change our Sim Page appearance w/templates created by the Sims2 Creative Teams related to each expansion pack that comes out for the game...  We also have pods for our Sim videos, stories, house/pet/sim creations and businesses, there is also a Sims2 News pod where we receive all the updates/changes/forum challenges etc... info -- and then just recently the administrators had to add a "Paying The Bills" pod to our sim pages where we have kind of a ticker tape flowing of advertisements... which they said was necessary to help pay for the site's bandwidth...  At first, everyone pretty much hated having ads on our personal sim pages... but now most of us don't even notice it's there... like anything else... it was just a change to get used to...  

I too like the idea of the "mystery" Zuner... and trying to identify who they are... looks like things are rolling along very nicely here !    

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Wolves A Courting... 

Living by Faith not by sight... +

Luther Vandross Forever!

 Wolfeyes7 wrote:

 PassMcNasty wrote:

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.

I LOVE this entire idea... as it's very similar to what I have as a Sims player on my Sim Page on the official website... w/the description, location, blog and guestbook -- we don't have custom links but it sure would be awesome to have that option here on our personal Zune pages...  Our description is called: My Profile and has these items... Name (Screen Name), Page Name, Member Since: (Date), Location, Interests (Hobbies, Musical tastes, etc...), About Me, (We're allowed to say if we have any religious beliefs or not - Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or w/e, marital status, kids/pets, high school/college/professions, and general things of interest...), Country, BBS Rank - Voluble VIP, Community Rank - Pollination Technician, Games Owned -- (This could be Zunes owned...)  : )   We're able to change our Sim Page appearance w/templates created by the Sims2 Creative Teams related to each expansion pack that comes out for the game...  We also have pods for our Sim videos, stories, house/pet/sim creations and businesses, there is also a Sims2 News pod where we receive all the updates/changes/forum challenges etc... info -- and then just recently the administrators had to add a "Paying The Bills" pod to our sim pages where we have kind of a ticker tape flowing of advertisements... which they said was necessary to help pay for the site's bandwidth...  At first, everyone pretty much hated having ads on our personal sim pages... but now most of us don't even notice it's there... like anything else... it was just a change to get used to...  

I too like the idea of the "mystery" Zuner... and trying to identify who they are... looks like things are rolling along very nicely here !    

I believe you've hit the proverbial nail on the head.
Your Zune page should feel like it's you. Your Zune friends should be able to look at the page, and definitely tell that it belongs to you.
This shouldn't be taken away to extremes, like it is in MySpace. The entire MySpace scheme is extremely ugly. Facebook does a rather good job. Perhaps Zune users could pick from a list of templates, as far as how they want the layout of their page to look like.
Of course, privacy is still a top priority. Any new options for displaying information should be available to be made available to only the desired people of the Zune user. They should be in complete control over who can see their profile.
Most of the games, and concepts already mentions do already exist on social networking sites. I'm not particularly a fan of social networking sites, because of people's tenancy to give out too much information about themselves that can lead to undesirable situations and effects in their real lives.
The point I'm trying to make, is that the Zune Social could at least have the bare features you'd expect from any social networking site, while retaining absolute privacy among ones friends.
One of the reasons I gravitated toward the Zune, was because of the sheer ability to customize certain aspects. This is one of the key design principals of the Zune. And there's no better place to demonstrate this, than on the Zune Social. The current beta site is still good. But it only has the most basic of features. The coolest of which, are the song history, and the Zune cards. Yet if people were able to customize their pages to a higher degree, whilst still implementing a fair amoung of control of this customization (like facebook), then the Zune would really be synonymous with "The Social."

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- Mike Wi-Fi Enhancements on the Zune Platform

I think that this is all a neat idea.  Adding the "quiz about me" concept would be neat, for sure.  I have been wishing that there was some sort of way to get to know folks who are my friends here, to see who visits my profile, to learn a little bit about other people who perhaps listen to the same things I do.  I know that PII would be a bad thing to put on this site, but some generic things would be interesting, too, like location, interests and hobbies, etc.  I know that on another site I frequent I have found it very interesting to see the things people like to do in their free time.

I think what I am saying is that I like the idea of allowing the users to put together a set of information about themselves.  It may be more fun to make it a multiple guess quiz format but for most folks we won't have any context to make a good guess (unlike your theme song for your boyfriend, which you've told us all about).  It might be good to allow the quiz to be updated and changed over time, so that as people start to know each other more, new questions can be put in play.

Another idea I had as I was reading the original post here was to have an area to write about your favorite artists -- why you like them, where you were first introduced to them, which songs/lyrics are most poignant to your life, etc.  And perhaps friends can post their own comments, too.  I know that each artist page has the ability to have comments put on it but putting it on the profile might make it more personal and more social.  Just a thought.

I do like the idea of the desert island album, but I don't see that as viral or sticky as the other ideas.  Nor do I see it building any real lasting friends.

The idea of a who am I game is intriguing in that it fits all the initial criteria that you had put up. It would be sticky (curiousity killed the cat), it would be viral (inquiring minds want to know), fun (duh), and it could leverage our strengths by allowing an option to have our tunes used as clues...for example I was born in Tokyo, one of my hints would be "My Woman from Tokyo" by Deep Purple, that would showcase the Zune Market place and introduce folks to new music.  This one also offers us a chance to change the subject to  "what do I do for a living" ( "Bus Rider" by the Guess Who), what is my favorite hobby ("Surfin' USA" by the Beach Boys, "Dancing fool" by Frank Zappa) etc.  That really needs to be expanded on. If we throw it all out at once I belive that it will be confusing for the social zuner that would have to read pages and pages on the weekend to catch up.  So the more specific it is, the better, then add to it as the numbers start waxing and wanning. 

May I blither on? For example if the game was where am I located?  Just the off the top of my head I have:

Asleep in the Desert by ZZ Top

Key Largo by Bertie Higgins

18 Miles to Memphis by The Stray Cats

Moon Over Bourbon Street by Sting

Lousiana Rain by Tom Petty

Under the Bridge by RHCP

As for MySpace, many peeps shy away from meeting places.  Younger zuners (some of them) are not allowed on those sites and I would want them to feel as include as the rest.  I would think that keeping it Zune site specific would allow all of us a chance without restriction. 

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There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. Frank Zappa

 jetherealz wrote:

 

• 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!)

Hi Jessica,

Making something that integrated with other Windows Live properties would help to accomplish the "viral" aspect that you are after. So here's some ideas on extensions to your original ideas:

• If I take part in the music trivia thing then put something on my Live Spaces friends' "What's new" feeds along the lines of "jamie scored 8 out of 10 in the Zune music trivia game". Something like that anyway.   (Definitely my numero uno request here. It wouldn't be that difficult either.)
• Same for voting. If I vote on something, put that info onto my friends' "What's new" feeds.
• Live Messenger v9 is going to have a feature where you can pick a tune that plays whenever someone logs in (different tune for each person). Perhaps that tune could be the one that you dedicate on Zune Social?
• Could the questions in the music trivia thing be integrated with http://qna.live.com perhaps?
• Produce a gadget that I can put on my Live Space or on http://my.live.com that shows the things I've voted on/music trivia results/dedicated songs
• Produce a Windows Live Toolbar button that takes me to a page containing all things to be voted on or quizzes to take part in
• Build a Windows Live Group (after it is finally released) for each music trivia quiz where people can interact/discuss/argue
• Allow me to publish my trivia results as my Live Messenger status
• If someone attempts a quiz that I have published, tell me about it via Live Alerts. It'd be nice to get a "toast" popup saying "so-and-so is currently attempting your quiz"
• If someone dedicates a song to me, tell me about it using Live Alerts (again, a toast popup would be great).
• Produce a writer plug-in that allows me to publish trivia/votes/dedicated songs in a blog post
• Produce a Live Agent (aka a bot) that would allow me to   participate in a quiz/vote in desert island discs   from within Live Messenger. (OK, this one will be quite hard)
• Use Messenger Presence and the IM control (http://dev.live.com/messenger) to show if a quiz author is online or not when you are answering their quiz (I've suggested the use of Messenger Presence to you before)
• Vista Sidebar gadget that shows a list of available quizzes
• Allow people to to post a video of themselves introducing their quiz. The video could be hosted on MSN Video
• Build chatrooms around quizzes that people participate in using Live Messenger
• Mobile. Let me participate in a quiz from my mobile phone
• Show me a list of all my Live Contacts. Let me choose one of them to dedicate a song to and send them a Live Alert/email/Space "What's New" comment telling them that they've had a song dedicated to them.
• Publish lists of [quizzes/songs that I have dedicated/desert island discs] as an RSS feed. (Not really a Windows Live thing but thought I'd mention it anyway).

That's all for now. I'll add to this list over time when I think of more.

 

I'm really stoked by the ideas you've put up here though. I can't wait to see them come to fruition.

-Jamie

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<a href="http://tinyurl.com/5nqozw">My Zune blog</a>

 katedidnot wrote:

I do like the idea of the desert island album, but I don't see that as viral or sticky as the other ideas.  Nor do I see it building any real lasting friends.

The idea of a who am I game is intriguing in that it fits all the initial criteria that you had put up. It would be sticky (curiousity killed the cat), it would be viral (inquiring minds want to know), fun (duh), and it could leverage our strengths by allowing an option to have our tunes used as clues...for example I was born in Tokyo, one of my hints would be "My Woman from Tokyo" by Deep Purple, that would showcase the Zune Market place and introduce folks to new music.  This one also offers us a chance to change the subject to  "what do I do for a living" ( "Bus Rider" by the Guess Who), what is my favorite hobby ("Surfin' USA" by the Beach Boys, "Dancing fool" by Frank Zappa) etc.  That really needs to be expanded on. If we throw it all out at once I belive that it will be confusing for the social zuner that would have to read pages and pages on the weekend to catch up.  So the more specific it is, the better, then add to it as the numbers start waxing and wanning. 

May I blither on? For example if the game was where am I located?  Just the off the top of my head I have:

Asleep in the Desert by ZZ Top

Key Largo by Bertie Higgins

18 Miles to Memphis by The Stray Cats

Moon Over Bourbon Street by Sting

Lousiana Rain by Tom Petty

Under the Bridge by RHCP

As for MySpace, many peeps shy away from meeting places.  Younger zuners (some of them) are not allowed on those sites and I would want them to feel as include as the rest.  I would think that keeping it Zune site specific would allow all of us a chance without restriction. 

 

Ooh, I love this! It could be a set series of questions you can pick from, and then you choose the answers. For example, we would have say 50  questions, something like this:

Which of the following best describes my school days:

-- Hot for Teacher - Van Halen

-- Smokin' in the Boys Room - Motley Crue

-- Be True to Your School - Beach Boys

 -- School's Out - Alice Cooper

We could create the questions and suggest answers, but then allow users to put in their own answers. Does that make sense? We'd have a set list of questions, and users could choose some or all of them, and then edit the answers for each question to make them their own, or just use our defaults.

Or something else? Should users be able to create their own questions, too? (That would require a higher degree of policing, of course, because of our code of conduct and the potential for bad language/themes/etc - but we do have processes in place for that, anyway.)

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

 jamiethomson wrote:

Hi Jessica,

Making something that integrated with other Windows Live properties would help to accomplish the "viral" aspect that you are after. So here's some ideas on extensions to your original ideas:

<snipped all awesome ideas>

Jamie - You are completely right on about all of the above. However, it's out of scope for this project; we need to keep it to only what I control (this web site) and not integration with others. Integration with WL Spaces and all the other things you mention is definitely a common request and something we want to do, though.

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

I think that it would be cool to have some sort of music quiz like you tend to see on Myspace where your asked a number of questions to see what band your most like or something like that, and after have the option to put the result on your Zune card.  It could be some thing like...

 

When your board you find your self listening to music most like

AC/DC

Korn

Kayne West

Eminem

The Beatles

Red Hot Chili Peppers

 

Each answer would be weighted to a genre then another quiz would narrow it down more.

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Come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty big pointy teeth~ Monty python and the Holy Grail

Every week, a random song can be picked from all the songs that people listen to, then people try to sing to it, and put a recording...

OR

a song that is hard to figure out what the lyrics are is posted, with a link for people to hear it, then people try to type out the lyrics as accuarately as possible for one part..

ONE last idea...

a song is posted, and people try to figure out what the title & wrtiter/singer/band is.

 Gatapi wrote:

a song is posted, and people try to figure out what the title & wrtiter/singer/band is.

I think this idea is worthy of it's own project completely!  It is a great idea for having people looking through the Zune Marketplace for the tune.  A totally polar song from the band's mainstream.  Something that would take a while to figure out.  Like "Hot Dog" by Led Zepplin.  Listen to it!  I can conceptualize peeps saying, "I know that voice!"  But because the song is so atypical it would be hard to figure out.  I likey!

Certainly worthy of thinking about in my opinion.

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There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. Frank Zappa

While the hamster is still whirling on the wheel:

Just a concept...

A simple scavanger hunt within the marketplace offering freedownloads for the first (number to be determined) people that get the answer.  Clues will be found only within the Zune marketplace under Title, Artist, Genre, even an obsure reference in the bio's or the album cover.  Hard clues to great tunes....not well thought out yet, but everybody loves a contest! 

Very Simplified example:

These are all clues to lead you to a certain song by a certain artist:

1st Clue:  Why Can't We Be Friends (Title)           Answer: War (Artist)

2nd Clue:  February release Snowdogs (Artist)      Answer:  Animal Farm (Album)

3rd Clue:  Not Vodoo Glow Skulls (Album)          Answer:  Pig (Album) by Zeke (Artist)

4th Clue:  Iommi's (Artist) band                             Answer:  Black Sabbath (We are almost there!)

5th Clue:  Epic (Artist) cover tune                          Answer:   War Pigs (Wheee! Add them together)

Final Answer: War Pigs by Black Sabbath.

The winner would not only get a download to be determined.  We could even keep a running score of the top winners and have and icon on their zune card (is that within the scope of your project Jessica?

In production this would be much harder, gobs of questions all from the zunemarket!  What do you all think?  It would have to be determined as to what constitutes a win, timed event, accumulation of answers, etc..

 

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There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. Frank Zappa

I like the scavenger hunt idea, for sure. That's totally fun and engaging. (And hard - I would have had to look up every one of your clues!) How would we devise the clues - our editorial team internally, user-submitted, something else?

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