About a year ago, I put out in the Zune forums a question. What if we tried to develop a feature "out in the open?" Typically we do our development behind closed doors, and we do this for a number of reasons: competitive advantage, because things ALWAYS change mid-cycle and if we promised one thing in November, what we delivered in April would likely be totally different, and to get the most out of the marketing splash when the time does come.

However, to try to be more "social" about Zune development, we experimented with asking the community to help design a feature, scoped to the web and to a "fun" activity that could be cordoned off from the rest of the site so we wouldn't give away our secrets. The community came up with a music trivia/quiz game, where users could write their own questions and answers and post quizzes to their own profiles.

Well, this process has really sort of proven why keeping things quiet until we're ready to release is a good thing. The quiz feature was slated for our 3.0 release in September, but had to be cut because of prioritization of more important features. It was then supposed to be in our release in November, but a personal problem with the main developer caused delays from which we couldn't recover and still ship on time. And now, it's March and here you go.

There are actually two parts to the quiz, only one of which we are releasing today: the ability to create and publish quizzes on your own profile. Eventually we'd like a process by which real music trivia questions get into an overall Zune trivia quiz, with great questions contributed by users. That's stage two (which is TBD in terms of release date, or even if we'll do it at all - your feedback on the quiz as it is today will be crucial to the prioritization process of that work).

So, the Quiz Builder can be used for a few different things: a fun, "get-to-know-me" better quiz (I'll be posting on of those on my page very soon); true music trivia questions you write yourself; or, frankly, trivia about anything. It's just another way for users to connect and contribute to The Social. I hope you have fun with it - let me know what you think!

To get to the quiz, go to your "my social" page and click "my quizzes" in the Quick Links. From there you'll launch into the Quiz Builder. To take another user's quiz, you can visit his profile page - if he's got a quiz set up, there will be a link towards the bottom of the right hand column.

To help you get started, here are some sample personal questions that rely on music as their answers.

• What was the first concert I chose to attend?
• What was the first record I bought?
• When I was 12 <or whatever age>, which of the following bands did I listen to?
• Which of the following musicians have I met in person? <if you've ever met someone, of course>
• Which of the following albums would I take with me if I were stranded on a deserted island?
• Which American Idol participant is my overall favorite?
• Which of these songs best describes my personality?
• What song describes how I feel about the weather? (Here are some ideas: Only Happy When It Rains; Let it Snow; Good Day Sunshine)
• What song describes how I feel about my job? (Ideas: Workin' for the Weekend; 9 to 5; Short Skirt, Long Jacket; Working Man)
• Yay! Go have fun with it! And post links to your quizzes or good questions or feedback in the comments!