Zune Thoughts: Music Trivia : The Social Feature

"I’m a program manager working on The Social. Basically, that means I, along with a development team, design new features for our web site. For those of you who aren’t familiar with software development, the way it generally works is like this: we get feedback on scenarios from users (whether that’s in these forums, doing research, etc), and then we design/build/test/release new features based on these scenarios. So I’m testing out a new idea: What if we try to develop a feature WITH the community? I mean, our community is the energy that powers zune social, right?"

I'm not sure how this slipped under my radar for so long. It might have something to do with my crazy real life work schedule! Last month, the Zune team wanted the community to help develop a new idea for the social. They gave some guidelines but let the floodgates open for everyone to bring their own ideas to the table. It seems we missed that boat since a feature has emerged from the all of the suggestions. It isn't, however, too late to get involved.

"Thanks everyone for the awesome suggestions - both for a game idea for The Social and for other requests (you can continue to submit other requests in the Wishlist forums!). Based on the poll and your comments, music trivia seems to have risen to the top. So let's go with that. Our next step is to figure out what exactly music trivia means."

The feature suggested is music trivia. I suppose that seems appropriate for a music social network. Now comes the task of fleshing out the feature and that is just getting started. If you want to be able to say you had a bit of a hand in helping Microsoft expand their Social offering, head over to their forums and throw your hat into the ring. Who knows, you could have the next brilliant suggestion! (I'd bet on it too, because let's face it, our readers are pretty smart! ;) )