dotblu blog

Introducing Video Questions!

Ever wanted to add a YouTube video to your dotblu questions?  To rate a song, add a video news report, or just share your own videos to get opinions from fellow dotblu users?  Now when you add a YouTube URL to your bets, the video will be added to your bet automatically!.

To add a YouTube video to a bet, just put the web address into the "URL of News Story" field on the bet creation page.  Note that you want to use the regular URL, and not the embed code that is provided by YouTube.  For example, for the bet above, this is what you would enter into the "URL of News Story" field:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8knTJDjhQBE

We hope this new feature can help everyone make even more creative and awesome bets.  Go ahead and try it out, good luck!

BluBet is now dotblu!

You've probably noticed by now some big changes going on at the familiar BluBet site.  For starters, we've changed the name, and completely redesigned the user interface.  As we've added new features and altered BluBet over the last few months, we had the feeling that some great features were too hard to find, and that the site may have been becoming too confusing for new users to jump in and start playing.  So in changing to dotblu, we hope that you'll find the site easier to get around and find what you're looking for.  Here's a few ways we've improved the navigation:

• Home
  Here you'll find all the information about your account, including the questions you've answered and created, the game challenges you've played, how many BluBucks you've earned, and how to change your account settings.  Some of these sections were hard to find before, so by placing them in the main navigation, we hope you'll have no trouble finding them now.
• Questions
  We've separated the three types of questions on dotblu into different sections: now you'll be able to easily browse Prediction, Quiz and Majority Wins questions depending on which you prefer to play. 
• Games
  The arcade section is more integrated into the main site, making it easier than ever to find, create and play game challenges. Look under "Home" for your own game challenges, "Play" to find games and challenges, and "Create" to make your own game challenges.
• Spend
  And when you've earned enough BluBucks to buy some goods for your profile, or if you need more and want to buy some Tokens, the stores are easier than ever to find under the Spend tab at the top.

We think that dotblu is a great improvement over BluBet, and we hope you all agree.  Take a few minutes to look around and find all your favorite features in the tabs on top.  We think the redesigned site is much closer to our vision for dotblu, and looks a whole lot prettier too.  As always, if you have any suggestions or questions about dotblu, please contact us at feedback@dotblu.com, or contact the House.

Cheers,

The dotbluers.

How can I win the Bet of the Day?

We get questions all the time on how to win a Bet of the Day, why a particular bet wasn't chosen, suggestions for Bet of the Day, or what players can do to make their bets more likely to win a Bet of the Day. Hopefully, the following will help clarify some of these questions.

We review all bets for the Bet of the Day award, and choose the best bet created since the last award was chosen.  We choose a BOTD 2-3 times a day, one around 10AM Pacific, another around 7PM Pacific, and possibly a third around 12-1AM Pacific.  This makes sure that each Bet of the Day will be visible for the maximum time possible, and lets a few users every day reap the rewards. 

We won't choose a Bet of the Day from the same user twice in one day, and we try to spread out the awards as much as possible, but of course, some users are trying much harder to win and will wind up winning the award more frequently.  As a reminder, here's the criteria we use for selecting a Bet of the Day:

• The bet asks a creative and thought-provoking question.
• The content of the bet uses correct spelling and grammar and is descriptive.
• The title should be as descriptive as possible, so that people know at a glance what the question is about without reading the bet description.
• Prediction bets are more likely to be chosen than majority wins bets.
• The Bet of the Day should include pictures to illustrate the bet's choices.

But of course, some days there are simply too many quality bets to choose from, and we can only choose one bet in the allotted time frame for Bet of the Day.  So what makes some bets stand out more than others?  Here's some more suggestions on how you might win the Bet of the Day:

• We like to choose bets that are topical for inclusion on the front page, so a bet that discusses a recent news story may be more likely to win Bet of the Day.
• When you do discuss a recent news story, include a link with the bet to further illustrate what the bet is about.  That way, we can verify the accuracy of the information, and if users have any questions there will be an easy source for information about the bet.
• With the recent changes regarding borrowing BluBucks, some users don't like to participate in bets with high antes.  Also, the first bet that most new users see on BluBet is the Bet of the Day, so we don't want new users to be discouraged by placing a high ante bet early on after joining BluBet.  For that reason, we are less likely to pick a Bet of the Day that has an ante of over 5000, and the lower the ante the better.  (We recommend an ante of 1000.)

Thanks for all the great bets, and good luck winning the Bet of the Day!