The Inaugural Post - Pandora

How do you take a website beyond the tipping point?

I don't know.

But I'll share what hooks me to a great website, or what features might do so - if they were ever added. I'll mostly focus on the new crop, but if an older site (Web 2.0, Web 1.0 or otherwise) adds new stuff I'll have a look.

I'll start off with one of my favorites:

The premise is great- you tell us about songs/artists you like - we create a radio station stocked with songs we think you'll like, based on your original choices.

The name- you never know what happens when you open the box - sure, there are some negative connotations with the metaphor (which the Pandora people seem undecided if they want to air out) but I think its wicked and catchy and great.

The execution - How do you make pandora even more memorable? I have a few suggestions.

-This is the kind of app that's begging to for an option to be minimized to tray - I managed to get this done on my own using bubbles - but a built in option would be nice.

- A great option would be to actually hear the name of the song and of the performing artist before or after the song plays - for when the program is in the background, or the user is away from the computer - so that later when you look up the playlist you'll easily remember which new songs you liked. In the past such a feature was probably impractical given the number of songs names that would need to be recorded (and a non human voice being a shitty idea) . Nowadays you can think of ways to handle this however - a cool (and inexpensive) solution would be to use mturk - brief qualification test to determine pleasant voice and a decent mic- then paying a couple of pennies for every song name recorded (and some noise processing) should be able to get through the entire library fairly rapidly.

- If you add another song or band to a station you already have set up there should be some kind of visual cue (i.e. add a + to station name)

- The suggestion engine seemed to work better for song titles (even challanges like Velvet Underground's the gift were handled nicely) then for artists- obviously the more varied the career the harder to capture what the user wanted. If someone types e.g. Bob Dylan they should be given the option to name a couple of songs they liked- to help zero in on the desired style (yeah, you could do this later but by then most users will give up).

- I would have liked more non US/ UK music - e.g. I couldn't find one flamenco band (no, Gypsy Kings don't count)

- The status bar showing song progress should be easier to spot- and hovering it should show song time left

-One community feature could be to show whose also listening to the same station/ song as you.

- Since the idea is to introduce new music a link to more band info (eg on wikipedia) is fairly essential

-A played songs map could be automatically created on showing thumbnails of all songs in a session, highlighting which were given thumbs up/ down

-Vertical suggestions- do you have Leonard Cohen and Smashing Pumpknis stations? other user with the same selections also liked....

Bottom line: Did I mention this was one of my favorites?