BIG changes coming up
July 28th, 2008
Hope you’re all enjoying the Bragster Olympiad and are inspired for a wicked summer full of dares and bragging. You’ve been asking for a lot of changes for a while now, and the team here has been working very hard to make them a reality. In a few months time, you’ll be able to sample the result when we release an upgrade of the site after summer.
So what will change? We’ve been following all of you closely and got a lot of feedback after launching dares earlier this year. You all seem to be crazy about dares as they are the majority of all new events created (as opposed to bets or polls). So we decided to give you more of the good stuff, and do some serious restructuring of the site’s functionality related to daring and showing off in general. The main goal is to reward our best users more, while enhancing the social experience for everyone.
1. We’re retiring bets and polls. As we have been growing organically, we’ve added new features really quickly. Some of them took off straight away, but we never really removed the less popular ones. We have now decided that we’re going to focus on dares and remove all bets and polls. We will also have a more consistent language and refer to Dares for all challenges and Brags for all pieces of evidence or other show-off material (like videos or pictures).
2. Turn on BragTV. The focus on the new site will be on what really matters: videos or pictures you want to show off to your friends and other bragsters. We’ll have a big Brag TV section that will host all those videos and pictures and make it easy for viewers to browse the best bits on Bragster.
3. Upload videos directly to Bragster. After the new upgrade, you’ll be able to upload your videos directly to Bragster, and we’ll play them in a higher resolution on a dedicated Brag page. You will also be able to embed them on other sites.
4. Two new dare types. On the current site you can only dare one person directly, but we’re working on the following three types of dares: (1) open dares, (2) personal dares, (3) dare a friend. An open dare enables you to challenge the whole Bragster community to do something the best, fastest, farthest, … e.g. “Who can down the most Tabasco shots”; a personal dare is a statement that you can do something yourself, e.g. “I bet I can down 10 Tabasco shots”; finally you can dare friends directly in the same way you already can on the current site, e.g. “I dare Bertrand to down 10 Tabasco shots”.
5. Bye-bye BragBucks, hello Bragging Rights! We’ve heard from you that BragBucks aren’t really the best way to reward real Bragsters. This is completely true: right now you can earn as many BragBucks by placing your bets on the right outcome, as the person actually completing the dare, which is why we’re replacing BragBucks with Bragging Rights. You will only earn Bragging Rights for Brags you uploaded yourself. How many Bragging Rights you’ll earn will mainly depend on how much people see your Brag, and how they rate it.
6. Thumbs up/down are out. Since we’ve retired BragBucks, we also decided to retire the rating system. Bragging Rights will also take the place of the rating system.
7. Join Groups and Teams. You’ll be able to create groups and teams, and we’re going to make search better, so it will be easier to find your friends. You can team up with your best friends or join your university group. To get you started, you’ll be able to import your contact list from your email address book.
That’s about it for now, we’ll keep you updated via our blog as and when we make some of the changes listed above. The look and feel of the site will also change, and we’ve even thrown in a new logo! The screenshot below should give you a bit of a flavour already.
If there is anything else you’d like to see, don’t hesitate to let us know by either leaving a comment on this post, contact us, or send me a personal message at wim @ bragster [dot] com.
Now get your Bragster on!
July 28th, 2008 at 06:30 PM
hey cool im the example picture ..love the new ideas
July 28th, 2008 at 06:30 PM
hey cool im the example picture ..love the new ideas
July 28th, 2008 at 09:16 PM
It is a shame that you are retiring bets and polls. I understand that brags are more popular but bets and polls still have their place and now they will not. A personal dare on your new website could be worded as a bet as you post here in your blog, “a personal dare is a statement that you can do something yourself, e.g. “I bet I can down 10 Tabasco shots”. So since you used the word “bet” in your own example, why not keep bets to and since people like to know how other people think and feel, you should keep polls also.
Bye-bye bragbucks is not a good idea either. What happens to all the bragsters who have a nice amount of bragbucks because of good betting on the right outcome by them. Do they just disappear and we all have to start over form 0. That is not fair. You will only earn Bragging Rights for Brags you uploaded yourself. How many Bragging Rights you’ll earn will mainly depend on how much people see your Brag, and how they rate it. I do not like that idea either because there are bragsters here who do not upload their own brags because they like to bet on other people doing brags, bets or polls and are not doers, just watchers and the way it is set up now, both kinds of people can earn bragster bucks. What happens to the people who do not upload their own dares after you make your changes? They will earn little to no Bragging Rights.
Thumbs up/down are out is also a bad idea. For the people who set up brags, dares and bets now, how they judge them is a good way for people to give either a thumbs up/down for a rating. So the bragsters now who have a 100% rating will what? Start all over from 0 and if they are not the type to upload brags, they will have 0 to hardly any Bragging Rights and hardly any ratings. That will not be good for those kind of bragsters.
July 28th, 2008 at 09:55 PM
Look what another bragster said about your new chamges on his profile page…
MikeRowave Jul 28 2008 at 21:41 ( in reply to ROCKHARDCOCK )
I’m in complete and total agreement with you! I’m not an employee of bragster, but I think 10% of the dares are awesome and the rest are tedious. I like the bets & have had some great discussions with thoughtful people here. With the emphasis on the dares, I think the average age, and IQ, has decreased somewhat. Look at the list of bets I’ve created. Some pretty good ones I think and I’ve gotten a high number of joiners for most of them. Why give this up?
July 28th, 2008 at 10:26 PM
everything with the new stuf is great exept getting rid of the polls i like polls
July 28th, 2008 at 11:10 PM
I think that only the teams/groups thing is a good idea. But by removing polls and bets, people who actually want to do those things will probably get confused if they didn’t read this. I personnally like polls and bets. So, please don’t get rid of them.
July 29th, 2008 at 04:46 AM
And here is yet what another bragster member said about BIG changes coming up…
http://www.bragster.com/bet/14790-you-like-new-changes#comment-219536
trixster said on Jul 29 2008 at 00:23…
let me just say ive been a bragster for almost a year now and i think that as the site currently stands there are very few issues that need to be changed.
POLLS
I agree with you guys that we cant get rid of the polls, it would only alienate some of the sites users and like mike says some of us bragsters like to keep are anonymity and don’t find much appeal in making an ass out of ourselves (not that watching others make an ass of themselves isn’t funny :-) )
another point to make is that not all bragsters have the means to record there activities most dares rely heavily on photographic and recorded evidence a portion of site users wont be able to join in without the proper equipment
THUMBS UP/DOWN
i dont mind either way about the thumbs up/down. yes I have a 100% record but i wouldn’t miss it and like oakforest said the system has been abused in the past.
BRAGBUCKS
id miss my bragbucks, i might not have as much as one or two of us here but I earned those badboys over the last months and it would be a shame to see them simply disappear. Perhaps bragster could find away to convert them into the new braging rights system it would be better than simply losing them all together
also aren’t bragbucks bragsters currency? How do we wager bragging rights? If my understanding is correct bragging rights sound harder to achieve and i would be less willing to risk them.
LOGO
what about you guys think about bragsters current logo and colour scheme? i think the logo is part of the whole bragster experience its bright, colourful and unique changing it would be a shame
TEAMS
im curious of how the team system will work it sounds like a good idea. I know we have some teams on bragster: oakforest,crank juiced ,jakd etc to name a few. hopefully it wont lead to bragster gangs lol
WHAT ID LIKE TO SEE:
Don’t know if they are possible but heres a few trivial ideas im throwing out there:
more personalisation on profile pages
some sort of clock on a persons profile so you can see what timezone they are in. Bragsters are from all around the world and id find it useful
chat room (I know im not the only one)
upgraded notice pop up thingy (for some reason if I use Firefox browser when I come online the pop up thing likes to constantly remind me im online over and over)
When all said and done it is up to bragster to decide on the changes. Obviously they have been getting requests for changes and if they believe it is in the best interest of the majority those changes will be made. I personally hope they don’t change the site too much, bragster is my favourite website at the minute and id be disappointed if it lost its edge.
…Wow I wrote more than I thought I would
July 29th, 2008 at 06:39 PM
I do like the open dares! they sound good…
but it will be sad to see polls and bets go. The site as gottabet has changed drastically. Getting rid of bets, polls and bragbucks seems to be getting rid of what this site started with!
But you know what you are doing and change is good! :D
The only recommendation I would have would be to keep bets and polls, since removing them restricts the amount of things we can do on here.
July 29th, 2008 at 08:35 PM
I am unhappy cause of the new changes it wont be the same
July 29th, 2008 at 09:40 PM
HAHAHA CYAN IS ON THE EXAMPLE PAGE HAHAHA
and good job on the rest of the stuff i hope its not TOOOOOOOOO confusing