Zune Social was the online component of
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
's
Zune initiative. It was a
social networking
A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...
website that displayed a user's most-played artists, favorite and recently played songs, a list of the users friends, what the user's friends were listening to, and any comments about them.
It has been compared to
iLike and
Last.fm in that it tracked and displayed, or "scrobbled", songs that the user had played.
The central component of Social was the Zune Card. It was a
Flash-based widget that could be embedded on other sites and social networking pages (
Myspace
Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
, etc.). It showcased the user's most recently played songs, their most played artists and number of times that artist had been played, and a user-selected list of favorite songs. Clicking a song, artist, or album would bring up the respective page on the Social website. Select songs had an option to preview a 30-second clip, and users could download the song via Zune Marketplace, suggest the song to a friend, or add it as one of their favorites.
In May 2008, Microsoft added reputation badges to users' Zune Cards, which could be earned by having listened to an album or artist a certain number of times, or by making helpful posts in the Zune forums. In addition, Zune Cards could be synced with user's devices; subscribers to Zune Pass could in this way download all the songs on their friends' cards.
Comparisons to Microsoft's
Xbox Live Gamertag were inevitable, as the two services use the same back-end. They differed in that the Gamercard showed the user's recently played games, while the Zune Card displayed recently played songs. Users signed into the service via
Windows Live ID and could link their Gamertag and Zune tag so that friends on Xbox Live would carry over to the other service.
Plays were recorded on both the device and software, and the software sent play updates by default every 15 minutes. Songs played on the device were recorded during the sync process, though the order they show up on the Zune Card was a result of the sync order (not play order). Only albums that were in
AMG and Zune Marketplace were shown, and plays were kept in the database for 28 days only.
Zune Social Badges
If a user listened to an artist or album enough times, Zune awarded that user a badge.
Users also earned badges for contributing useful information to the Zune.net forums and for reviews.
Album Power Listener
*Bronze - 200 or more plays
*Silver - 1,000 or more plays
*Gold - 5,000 or more plays
Artist Power Listener
*Bronze - 200 or more plays
*Silver -1,000 or more plays
*Gold - 5,000 or more plays
Forums Contributor
*Bronze - 10 or more posts rated highly
*Silver - 25 or more posts rated highly
*Gold - 50 or more posts rated highly
Reviews Contributor
*Bronze - 10 or more reviews rated highly
*Silver - 20 or more reviews rated highly
*Gold - 50 or more reviews rated highly
Badges did not expire.
Similar services
*
Batanga
*
Deezer
*
iLike
*
Jamendo
*
MeeMix
*
MOG
*
Musicovery
*
Pandora Radio
Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by the broadcasting corporation Sirius XM that is based in Oakland, California in the United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Proje ...
*
Slacker
A slacker is someone who habitually work aversion, avoids work or lacks work ethic.
Origin
According to different sources, the term "slacker" dates back to about 1790 or 1898. "Slacker" gained some recognition during the UK, British Gezira Sche ...
References
External links
*
{{Zune
Defunct social networking services
Zune