Social Network - Feature Requests Go Here

If you can think of any specs you would like added that you feel I am missing, please make some suggestions. I will then place the final set of guidelines up for bid.

Objective

To create a social networking solution that will connect composers as friends, facilitate communication between composers, and organize the music and video titles of those composers.

General Overview

Upon clicking on a username in vbulletin, a user should be taken to his/her social network profile. Keyword tags will play a major role. If anyone types the same keyword tag as another person, the keywords will automatically popup where appropriate.

Add/Search/Browse Friends

Ability to add, search and browse friends.

Bulletins/Messaging

Ability to message and write bulletins.

(possible) Instant Messenger

Ajax based instant messenger.

(possible) Integrated Chats

Ajax based integrated chat channels.

Search

As compositions and videos are uploaded, they will be searchable by typing in the desired keyword. Keywords are determined by tags that users input upon uploading videos/music. “Hot Tags” that are related to the original tag, will be displayed at the top of the page. For example, if someone types in “chopin”, some hot tags may be “polonaise, ballade, nocturne, romantic). Note: no copyrighted material (unless your copyright) would be allowed to be uploaded.

Stats

Users can add music or videos to favorites. How many times a users music or video title is favorited, will be documented. Sites linking to this music or video title will be documented. Number of plays overall will be documented. Number of plays today will be documented.

Homepage

Homepage will display today’s top plays for music. Default will show top plays for today. User can select top plays for today, week, month. Users can select just added, most comments and top rated.

To the left, will be a navigation bar. The navigation bar will contain categories of music, but these categories will be “hot tags”, therefore the categories will be dynamic. The hot tags are the most popular tags that users input when uploading their music. The most common tags will actually be the categories in which these music titles will be listed under. For example, if “classical music” is a popular tag, it will be listed in the navigation bar as a category breakdown.

Search Engine Friendly

All urls will end in .html. A users profile will contain the username-userid.html. Users music title will be in the form of (style + name of piece.html).

Vbulletin Integration

Vbulletin profiles would be integrated with social networking profiles. For example, signing up for Vbulletin would automatically mean a user is signed up for the social network.

Admin functions

Would like to carry over same admin functions as vbulletin into the social network. For example, assigning moderators and admin would be important. Skin design and CSS formatting options would be necessary.

Features:

Profile

• Basic
  • Sex
    
  • Birthday
    
  • Hometown
    
  • Country/State
    
  • Email
    
  • AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Skype

  [*]Personal

  • Compositional Style (text box, keyword tags)
    • To accommodate those who have more than one compositional style, a user may click on an “add another style” button, which will automatically pop up another textbox, where a user can type in further styles. As more people type in certain styles, styles will be remembered by the database and pop up as other users type in that style. After a style is laid out in your profile, it becomes a tag and you can search other people who compose in the same style as you.

    [*]Favorite Composers (text box, keyword tags)

    • A user may click on an “add another composer” button, which will automatically pop up another textbox, where a user can type in further composers. As more people type in certain composers, composers will be remembered by the database and pop up as other users type in that composer. After a composer(s) is laid out in your profile, it becomes a tag and you can search other people who like the same composer(s) as you.

    [*]About Me, Musical Interests

    • Write about yourself here.

  [*]Compositions

  • A user may click on an “add another composition” button, which will automatically pop up another textbox, where a user can type in further compositions. As more people type in certain styles and names of compositions, they will be remembered by the database and pop up as other users type in styles and names of compositions. After a style and name is laid out in your profile, they become tags and you can search other people who compose the same style and named compositions as you.
    • Upload composition (mp3)
      
    • Style (mandatory)
      
    • Key signature (mandatory)
      
    • Creative name (optional)
      
    • Opus (optional)
      
    • Number (optional)

    [*]Tallies the number of times a composition has been played overall.

    [*]Tallies the number of times a composition has been played today.

    [*]Allows users to score and write quick comments.

    [*]Upon clicking on the mp3, it goes to another URL in a new window. The composition will play in the browser. Users can comment.

    [*]Write search tags, for search engine.

• Video Performances
  • Allows users to upload videos of performances only.
    
  • View users videos by clicking on their video tab.
    
  • Write search tags, for search engine.

Examples of input:

• Style = Waltz, Opus = 7, No. = 3, Key = G minor.
  • Tags: waltz, waltz in g minor, chopin, romantic, romanticism

  [*]Style = Sonata, Name = Fury, Key = A minor

  • Tags: sonata, fury in a minor, classical, keyboard, piano, piano music, scherzo

  [*]Style = Waltz, Opus = 3, Key = B minor

  [*]Style = Ballade, Name = Sunshine, Opus = 3, No. = 4, Key = C

As the compositions are being laid out, a user can click on the link to the mp3, and the browser will automatically go into a new window where the composition will play in a browser integrated mp3 player. The user will have the option to download the mp3, if the composer allows this option. Again, comments will be allowed. The compositions will be laid out under categories on a users profile, like so:

Examples of output:

Waltz (waltz is a tag, name of piece is a hyperlink. Hyperlink takes user to new page where users can comment, listen and download mp3. To right of hyperlink will be plays, plays today and rating.)

Op. 7 No. 3 in G minor (plays: 5 | plays today: 2 | rating: 87%)

Opus 3 in B minor

Sonata

Fury in A minor

Ballade

Sunshine, Op 3 No. 4 in C

This is pretty neat. A lot of work went into this. Thanks!

Would this be a feature users would pay for?

Would this be a feature users would pay for?

I really don't feel comfortable making any promises, but the basic networking functions will be free of course, or the network will not grow. We consume alot of bandwidth as it is (as high as one gigabyte/day), so adding the network will considerably increase bandwidth bills. I have no idea how successful this will be, but to give you an idea, Youtube spent about $1 million/month on bandwidth bills. If you think I can afford that, you got to be kidding me ;) One thing I may have to do is limit space. Therefore, a monthly subscription may be necessary to increase space. If you just upload midi's, this should be fine.

How will moderation tie into the profile pages and such?

The main point of moderation I think would be to delete spam accounts, created only for the purpose of advertising. In fact, I may make it a requirement to upload at least one original composition in order to be eligible for the social network. How would that sound?

In fact, I may make it a requirement to upload at least one original composition in order to be eligible for the social network. How would that sound?

Good idea.

I like the idea of having individuals list their compositional styles and composer influences; anything to make more connections in the network is a good idea. However, I have a problem with making the "style" tag and especially the "key" tag a mandatory part of every composition uploaded. I, for one, don't want to attach styles labels to my pieces, thereby giving the listener a bias before he/she ever has a chance to listen. And certainly not every piece is written in a key. These are good tags, for sure, but they should be made optional.

I didn't see this in the specs list, but I'm assuming that each composer will have his/her own "frontpage" where all their works are listed. Is this page going to be customizable? How customizable? Being able to upload a photo or two would be nice as well. Also, I think having a blog feature as part of the social network would be a wonderful thing, too. I think blogs would work a lot better on the social network than on the forum.

A few little "goodies" would be nice, as well -- such as a field on the homepage that randomly generates a musical quote, or something along those lines.

Will the wiki be a part of this social network, or will this be a wholly separate thing?

I, for one, don't want to attach styles labels to my pieces, thereby giving the listener a bias before he/she ever has a chance to listen. And certainly not every piece is written in a key. These are good tags, for sure, but they should be made optional.

The purpose of setting the style mandatory is because it would be the way to categorize the music. Feel free to categorize your works using your own nomenclature system. For example, "Symphonies", or "Winter Songs" etc.

Every piece has to be written in a key, or at least start out in a key. I would like the whole site to have the same basic naming structure, so if there are any suggestions on this, I am open to ideas.

I didn't see this in the specs list, but I'm assuming that each composer will have his/her own "frontpage" where all their works are listed. s this page going to be customizable? How customizable? Being able to upload a photo or two would be nice as well. Also, I think having a blog feature as part of the social network would be a wonderful thing, too. I think blogs would work a lot better on the social network than on the forum.

Yes, the frontpage will be your vbulletin profile (it will be converted/changed). I don't think we will allow css custom design, maybe just a few templates. I want to limit customization only because poor custom designs could slow down the site, and not everyone knows css. Blog seems like a standard for most social networks, so that probably wouldn't be a problem.

A few little "goodies" would be nice' date=' as well -- such as a field on the homepage that randomly generates a musical quote, or something along those lines.

Will the wiki be a part of this social network, or will this be a wholly separate thing?[/quote']

The homepage would contain most recently uploaded music. Perhaps at the top of the page we can have something like 3 random pieces everytime the page is loaded. Sounds like an idea.

The wiki should remain seperate, unless the coder I hire is able to integrate everything. But I really see no reason to have the wiki integrated.

Every piece has to be written in a key, or at least start out in a key.

Atonal music is usually written with the "apparent" keg-signature of C major/a minor, but it's actually just no key-signature. Saying an atonal piece is in C major would be absurd.

I think having it optional is no real problem.

Or possibly you can write Atonal or No key in that field?

I also don't really see what relevance the key signature has to the piece. For example, I often start in one key but then depart from it, sometimes never to return. What key signature would I specify for a work like that?

Just put the starting key I'd imagine, but I agree - I think too much importance is maybe being assigned to key sigs here. If we could have it as an optional tag.

I could make the key signature optional, but help me figure out a standard naming system of composition titles for Young Composers. I would like the naming system to have a few things in common, so composition names can be somewhat uniform.

A standard naming system? What's wrong with just - ? Or, do without a standard naming system and just have all the information laid out in tables.

I am all for having a standard, tagged naming system for pieces -- as I said, this only increases the networking aspect of the network, and that is a good thing. But there are only so many universal things you can make as part of a title of a work. Title and instrumentation, perhaps...but if you want a key field, you simply must allow for an N/A option or some equivalent.

I would prefer to just leave it at title and instrumentation. Possibly a self-identification of genre, but no more.

Indeed. I also think it bears stating (regardless of how obvious this may be) that having on/off options for most of the features in any admin control panel that comes with the software would be extremely useful. Remember that all of these specs are, at this stage at least, entirely theoretical. We don't really know what will work and what won't work in practice.

Any feature requests, please post them now. The design process will begin shortly.

Video embeds in profiles perhaps?

Video embeds in profiles perhaps?

We are currently discussing if video should be a part of the system or not. I thought that there may be some kind of demand for it on this site. If I decide to include video, there will be a both a music and video search, with music being the primary focus, and video secondary.

How much flexibility will the profile pages have when it comes to design? Will it be a myspace-like system?

How much flexibility will the profile pages have when it comes to design? Will it be a myspace-like system?

Probably not. I want Young Composers to look professional on all pages, therefore I'd rather have a few custom templates users can choose. Not to mention, the site will run much faster this way, because not everyone knows how to write in html/css correctly.

I'd like to have at least some personalisation...

Otherwise the pages would all look the same:(.

Probably not. I want Young Composers to look professional on all pages, therefore I'd rather have a few custom templates users can choose. Not to mention, the site will run much faster this way, because not everyone knows how to write in html/css correctly.

I approve. :) I love the YC look, as long as there's some degree of personalisation allowed, changing the layout for example, then I think having them all similar would be good.

I wonder if it's possible to make profiles as customizable as this one:

Blue Kaffee: Overture of a New Dawn's Profile

I wonder if it's possible to make profiles as customizable as this one:

Blue Kaffee: Overture of a New Dawn's Profile

Holy scraggy...that's HIDEOUS!!

My feature request is that Mitchell's feature request be ignored.

It is, rather. How about basing them on the YC default theme? (colour wise)

We're going to allow users to select a colour scheme on their profile, but the choice will stem from a pre-defined palette, comprised of tasteful, aesthetically competent shades. The layout will likely not be customizable, at least not in any meaningful sense.

There's rather a lot of personal info on that profile, Mitchell - our own system will probably be less about you and more about your music, but it will look something like that.