I was recently introduced to Mog, and got hooked instantly. It reminded me, in a sense, of the functionality and capabilities that I’ve yearned for over the years as I was part of the Acid Jazz mailing list – things related to finding new music that I was into, as it was emerging.

There are a lot of great things about Mog, but also some (potential) challenges. Chief among the latter is how the service does/can/will differentiate itself from Last.fm, which has a lead start on fulfilling a similar mission.

Here are a few things that I want from such a service, and where Mog may be able to take the pole position.

  • Widgets (in general): Greater flexibility in creating new widgets, defining their elements, and controlling their position and size. E.g., I want to add URLs for my favorite artists, maybe offer links to, or directly embed, a track of theirs that I particularly like.
  • Site operability
    • Keyboard shortcuts.
    • Fix the occasionally wonky formatting that occurs on a page — text should flow more smoothly.
  • Navigation: Why is it that I can’t seem to navigate back to the page that is served when I first go to the site? I want access to the dashboard of what’s been going on on Mog: new-comers, movers & shakers, new posts that are getting a lot of attention. Think Digg, in a sense.
  • General site / service: Show more info about who is behind Mog; put up a tangible “about us” section so that one can get the sense of the real team behind all of this goodness.
  • Vital signs vs. profile: Add a little more meat to what goes into the profile to give a richer baseline sense of what someone is about. Make the profile more directly accessible.
  • Tagging: should be a bit more accessible. Vague suggestion, I know, but I feel like tagging is a bit offhand in Mog.
  • Access to music: I guess this is in progress at Mog, but it’s mission-critical. If it’s about discovering music through others, I want to be able to hear the music and have access to buying it (and iTunes does NOT do it for me).

What else could Mog do? How about an affinity engine (or an interesting visual interface, such as music-map.com) to help users identify similar artists or tracks. Richer information on artists, albums, and tracks are also necessary to make Mog feel like a true resource.

I want to be able to cross-post between Mog and personal blogs. I would also like to see Mog incorporate some of the good ideas from other services such as Yelp and Dodgeball. Make it easy for people to connect in common activities – meeting up for concerts, live-blogging gigs or posting reviews after the fact, getting direct info as to when and where a favorite artist may perform next. Leverage mobile apps and RSS to make the service as versatile as users want and need it to be.

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