It's now time to bring together a world class team to help us do that! All these positions are location-irrelevant and totally flexible. You can work part time, from anywhere - even the beach, if you're lucky enough to have a beach :-). We're just looking for great people with a passion for amazing service.

Current Vacancies:

News Interns - Community & Social Media Manager - Customer Support Agents

**

News Interns [Interviewing in London UK or by Skype on 5 February 2010!]

Could you break the news? We're looking for brilliant writers who want to break into music journalism to contribute to our Global News Service, which starts on 8th February. Interviews are already set up in London for Friday 5th February so get in touch NOW if you'd like to be considered! This is an unpaid three month internship, after which renumeration will be offered.

We're focusing on the UK first, but are happy to hear from people in other territories too, for later in the year.

Click here for the full job description and application details: http://www.musbook.com/jobpost/256/

**

Community & Social Media Manager [apply as soon as possible - first interviews February 2010]

We're on the look out for a dynamic, highly driven individual with star quality, to take a pivotal and highly influential role at the centre of the MusBook organization. With a deep love of music and social networking, you'll likely be a young graduate, self-motivated and entrepreneurial, and happy to work a three month part time internship before graduating to a fully paid role. You'll love everything about our mission, and want to be central to our success. You can work anywhere, anytime you want, and create your dream job from this exciting role...

Click here for the full job description and application details: http://www.musbook.com/jobpost/378/

**

Customer Service Agents [not actively recruiting until later in the year]

Whilst we've been in development, our customer service hasn't exactly been a model of efficiency... However as MusBook grows, we'll need to offer top notch rapid response email support to our users around the clock. We're currently recruiting for a part-time ustomer service assistant to help cover support for a couple of hours a week.

Later in the year, we'll also require customer support agents in Asia, Australasia and the Americas to complement our existing administration and development team in Australia and India and make sure that there is 24/7 service from MusBook.com. So feel free to send us your CV and we'll keep it on file.

Apply to any of these positions by emailing your CV to support [at] musbook [dot] com!

Make sure you include the job title and the word 'application' in the subject line.

This is Justin at MusBook Support.

As we're just launching MusBook 2.0 Beta this week, I know there will be a lot of people coming to the site for the first time. And as it's so new and exciting, it's also a little raw, and some people may run into difficulties...

We're here! If there's anything you don't like, don't understand, or want to know, then please don't hesitate to email support at musbook dot com. We're here around the clock - the MusBook team is in America, the UK, India and Australia, so there's always someone on duty to sort things out. From today, we promise an answer to all support enquiries within 48 hours (although obviously we try and get back to you more quickly).

More importantly, we need your feedback! We want to make MusBook into a world-class operation, and we really need your support as our baby starts to mature! So please, let us know what you think. Really! We act rapidly on all suggestions - sometimes as quickly as 48 hours... if you notice a bug, we'll try and fix it the same day.

Thanks so much for visiting MusBook, and we hope you enjoy your time here on the site!

Yours,

Justin Delleur, MusBook.com Support

support [at] musbook [dot] com

Well, our new design and server upgrade is FINISHED!

That's right, after several months of excruciating work, we're nearly ready to unveil a lovely new purple MusBook.com!

We hope to make the switchover within a few days. Before we do, we're moving forward fast (starting right now, Friday evening!) with a massive bug-testing / troubleshooting effort to get you a new, fast, professionally-designed MusBook just as soon as we feasibly can.

So we'll be in touch again next week.

Stay tuned!

- The MusBook Team

Hi all

What a difficult night/evening/afternoon/morning it's been here in Australia/India/England/the USA!

We've stabilized the problems that occurred (it was all related to the new RSS feed), and we'll get back to you again later once everything is fixed. But for now, please be aware of the following two faults:

1) the front page of MusBook is displaying an absurd amount of imported blogs from various orchestras, individuals etc.

2) If you've updated your profile, or if you've joined the site since 21th September, there may be problems with your profile displayed.

Our development team in India is working late into the evening to get this sorted, and we'll update you again in a few hours.

Other than these two issues, full service has been restored to the site and you can continue to enjoy MusBook.com as normal. Apologies for the downtime earlier - we think the site was only unavailable for around 15-20 minutes, so we hope it didn't cause you too much inconvenience.

Thanks for your patience. A site like this is so large and complex that it's not easy to get everything right first time. But with your support, we'll succeed.

More in a couple of hours.

Yours,

- The MusBook team.

We're currently experiencing a problem with the site, as you may be aware.

Don't worry, but bear with us. These things happen. We're going to need a few minutes to sort this out.

We'll issue an update on the blog within the next hour.

- The MusBook Team

Hello Everyone,

Well, this is the final week where you will find the front page of MusBook to be moderately boring! ... We've finally taken delivery of the new functionality on our test site, and we'll be stress testing it over the weekend whilst our development team in India take a well earned break for Puja day!

We'll be back on Tuesday, fixing any last minute bugs and tweaks, and then hope to get the RSS out on the site by the end of the week.

From then on, you'll be able to synchronize you blogs, podcasts and vodcasts from external sites, so that they pop up on your MusBook profile (and indeed on the front page feed as well, so that you can reach out to the whole music community - great publicty!)

Obviously, as the flood of users who will start to join MusBook over the next week or two start to add their content, we'll have need for a filter system so that you get the information that interests you (and so that the front page feed doesn't refresh itself with a hundred new feeds every second!). But we'll introduce all those things gradually.

Similarly, the RSS functionality will have many refinements and improvements that will need to be made, so don't hesitate to let us know what we can do to improve your experience, and we'll get it sorted as soon as we can!

In preparation for the new RSS...

Log in, click 'edit profile information', anc check your 'social media' section. There, you can add your blog or podcast feed. It's usually a long web address ending with either .xml or .rss.

Any questions? Just leave a note on this blog and we'll be pleased to help!

Yours,

- The MusBook Team

Hi Everyone!

We're delighted to announce that the first prototype of Music Teachers' Map is now available!

http://www.musbook.com/teacher.php

This global map of teachers will allow anyone to scroll to their area, see at a glance all the teachers nearby who teach a specific instrument, then get in contact and arrange a trial lesson. Because the map links through to MusBook profiles, it will allow prospective teachers and students to get to know each other in advance of meeting, vastly improving the chance of finding a teacher who really works for you.

Plus, it's a fantastic reputation-building tool; existing students can leave testimonials for teachers, and later next week we'll offer a much more comprehensive 'teaching' page that will display all your teaching philosophies, results, qualifications etc. etc. etc. -- directly from your profile.

We'll also be introducing all the icons soon, so you'll be able to see musical instruments represent music teachers visually on the world map!

Please check it out, and let us know your feedback: http://www.musbook.com/teacher.php

Yours,

The MusBook Team

Hello everyone,

If you've checked in today to see the latest classical music jobs, you'll no doubt have noticed that our age-old UK country listing and 'coming soon' pages for everywhere else have finally been replaced by an all-singing all-dancing new job search facility. There are three things you should know:

1) There are a couple of problems with links to the job listings themselves, which our tech people in our office in Asia are battling with overnight to try and fix. We hope that all should be just about in working order by early tomorrow. In the meantime, we beg for your patience!

2) We are just starting to transfer across all the job listings now. Therefore, it will be Monday (at least) before you start to see comprehensive job listings on the site. Come on... 4 days... it'll be worth it!

3) There are a few more bells and whistles that we need to add to the job search function before it's complete. At the moment you can't sort the vacancies by location, or set your listing to expire automatically. So if you can give us a week or two to get that finished, we'd appreciate it!

But we now have a fully international jobs listing service with a broader reach than ever across many types of music job, updated constantly throughout the week not only by us... but also by you!

We hope you use the job listings service to find the job or the applicant of your dreams... we're committed to making it the best Classical Music Job page in the world, so any suggestions, please send them our way!

Best regards

Justin @ MusBook Support

Hi everyone!

Today marks the start of a renewed effort to push MusBook.com from a well-meaning but slightly ad hoc startup to a world-class music social network for Classical, Jazz and Contemporary music!

As part of that journey, we'll be updating you via this blog, telling you about the latest improvements to the site, any errors that get fixed, and addressing any questions or queries that you have about where MusBook is going.

Starting today, we'll post about any major updates to the site right here on this blog. As ever, please don't hesitate to tell us if you have a question or query. If you need a response, email support@musbook.com and our support team will get right back to you. If it's not urgent, or you have a general suggestion, just post a message here on the MusBook.com blog!

To the best of success!

Justin Delleur, MusBook.com Customer Support

Guidelines for Beta Testers

Hello, and welcome to the beta test for MusBook.com! We're so grateful for you taking the time to check out the site before it goes public.

The whole purpose of running the beta test is to make sure that everything is running smoothly by the time MusBook goes live to the general public. So, please be prepared for loads of unfinished things - you'll run into the odd broken link, placeholder text, or error message. That's fine. Just let us know, and we'll fix it.

If you come across anything that looks like it's in the wrong place, please tell us straight away by leaving a comment on this blog. Each day, we'll gather up your comments, add them to the list below, and send them on to the IT department for fixing by the following day.

Please check the list below first, in case someone else has already pointed out what's wrong!

We're already aware of these issues:

[updated 15th July] [*starred issues have gone into development]

• The TEACHER section is not yet working - anything under the 'teacher' tab is just a demo right now
• TWITTER currently updates MusBook status, but MusBook status doesn't currently update Twitter. ALSO 15 JULY - FAULT with twitter connection
  
• Twitter - examine shutout bypass and consider user expectations
• *issue reported: "Trying to click on 'my profile' - sometimes the drop-down menu gets in the way so you end up on Edit Profile info instead" -- this issue occurred in Internet Explorer -- UPDATE -- more space is needed between the two menus
• *Directory problem: "default for a city goes to one place. so if you only put 'london', the last person to have put 'london' is the only person visible because all the other users in that location appear underneath them. so this needs for people with no street addresses to be randomly scattered around a certain radius."
• 1st Dropdown - consider moving 'Twitter'
• *'Forums' dropdown - does 'About MusBook' need to be there?
• Create Forum moderation policy
• Reassess CSS - is font hierarchy consistent throughout site?
• Time Zones - should Perth (Western Australia) and Hobart be added to the time zone list?
• Should user profiles receive an automatic 'Welcome' comment ?
• Twitter. Do those members on Twitter expect/want other users to be able to see their timelines?
• MusBook member with deleted Twitter account still appears on list of users with Twitter accounts, despite no longer having one
• Submenu bar and other bits and pieces are not visible when viewing in Safari.
• there's a problem with the 'what's new' recent activity feed on the front page of the site. i don't know what it is. it's not showing up to date - like bang up to date last few minutes - updates.
• two users have reported to me of outgoing friend requests to other users that they don't remember adding. keep eye out for this in case any other users report same

• composers forums - reset as per agreed
• comments on a comment... this shows up in activity feed (at least on the user_home.php even if not currently on the front page!) but there is no email notificaiotn to the person who originally made the comment. does this matter?
• we need a twitter handle box for the individual user type to go in the bit where you have the 'about me' and the 'website' boxes. can this be linked so that you can click on it to follow someone?

• when using share buttons at the bottom of blog posts to share to facebook (not tested on others) the title and content syndicated across to FB in the thumbnail is standard musbook title page text, not title of blogpost/article - makes it irrelevant for readers on external site. needs investigation [response: this will be resolved when title tags are fixed] - 15 JULY CHECK TO SEE if this has now been resolved
  
• Is there a possibility of notification via email when a new discussion or reply is added?
• contact form is not working
• country choice in signup/profile info should be DROPDOWN not free entry, because it creates search inconsistencies. eg i have put my country as 'england' in my profile, but other people have put 'uk'. so if i want to find all violinists in england, it shows me in the search results but not violinists living in the uk who are in england. similarly, if you search for violinists in the 'uk' it won't show anyone listed as being in 'england' or 'wales' or 'scotland'. Therefore we need a drop down - and perhaps one that eliminates UK and lists only england, wales, scotland, n.ireland etc. There are likely other countries with similar problems.
• 'My Videos' needs to be next to 'Video Feed' on the 'My Apps' tab, or indeed have a tab of its own, and--there needs to be intuitive links to 'Add Video', 'Add Blog' etc etc, on the relevant landing pages.
• Clarification needed to prevent users posting on their own walls rather than other peoples'?
• check  title pages and meta descriptions across whole site now working correctly