Site Review Twitter Niche Poker Site

[TableBeeps]

I think it's a great idea and the site looks good. I think it would look better though if you used that green felt background image solely for the background and not the whole page. Perhaps make the middle section a white background, or some how break it up.

I think that would give a much more professional look. I realize that has nothing to do with usability, but from a visual perspective it might make the tweets stand out more.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for the input Jeremy. I am not sure if you made it past the homepage or not, but when you view someones profile or a specific event the users beeps are placed over a grayish background.

So really the all green felt background only takes place on the homepage which was kind of by design, because I wanted to add the feel of being at an actual poker table.

Sorry I didn't know if you were only commenting on the homepage or the site in general.

Does anyone have any experience with developing a widget? I kind of want to turn the beep posting page into an expandable widget that the user can set up next to their online tables while they play. This will allow the user to never take their eyes off the table when they want to beep an update to the site and cross-post it to twitter.

[Mike]

Hey Mike, thanks for the comments. I have not yet thought about making it so posts from twitter would cross-post to my site, i didn't know that was even possible. I will have to look into that.

It's not exactly "cross posting" FROM twitter TO your site, more like your site running a search of the twitter api every minute or so to look for #pokerbeep and then posting that tweet to your site under the correct user.

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23pokerbeep 

The downside to having users post FROM twitter is the fact that the user isn't actually visiting your site (obv)

The upside is all of those twitter followers see #pokerbeep and start wondering "What the hell is a pokerbeep?", which helps you brand.

[TableBeeps]

It's not exactly "cross posting" FROM twitter TO your site, more like your site running a search of the twitter api every minute or so to look for #pokerbeep and then posting that tweet to your site under the correct user.

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23pokerbeep 

The downside to having users post FROM twitter is the fact that the user isn't actually visiting your site (obv)

The upside is all of those twitter followers see #pokerbeep and start wondering "What the hell is a pokerbeep?", which helps you brand.

Well currently when users post on my site, the tweet that appears on their twitter is followed by a shortened link that looks like http://tblbp.it/username the shortened name represents tablebeeps and links back to the user profile

[TableBeeps]

The Mobile TableBeeps Portion of my site is now live.

I was wondering if anybody from these forums could log onto my site Tablebeeps from their smart phone and test out / critique my mobile site.

Current Phones Supported: iPhone, Android, Blackberry 5.x or greater. Also works on iPod touch, and iPad

Below is a screen shot of what it looks like. I wonder if I could get away with this as opposed to getting an App made for the time being...

[TableBeeps]

I am looking for opinions / ideas on ways i can monetize tablebeeps. I dont know if I want to be a standard affiliate and promote various poker rooms etc. Could anybody help me brainstorm some ideas as far as monetization goes. I'd like to offer prizes for people who have the most beeps in a given month or something of that nature. Maybe I could have companies advertise mobile / poker products and offer some of their merchandise as prizes.

What do you all think?

[jdwanchalk]

I am looking for opinions / ideas on ways i can monetize tablebeeps. I dont know if I want to be a standard affiliate and promote various poker rooms etc. Could anybody help me brainstorm some ideas as far as monetization goes. I'd like to offer prizes for people who have the most beeps in a given month or something of that nature. Maybe I could have companies advertise mobile / poker products and offer some of their merchandise as prizes.

What do you all think?

I think you should have considered this before you went out and created it.

With that said, I don't see how this will be at all easy to monetize. You are catering to more regular players, implying that they likely have rakeback. So, if you don't offer rakeback, I don't see where you will possibly generate sign ups. I also would not be pushing them to your site to sign up, but instead to a stand alone rakeback site.

You are in between a service that regular players would pay for and a service that regular players would use. The easiest way to find new sign ups, though, is to chase after new players; not existing ones.

[TableBeeps]

Yeah I know I probably should have thought about this before hand. I guess my ultimate goal was to create a good enough free product to generate enough traffic to the site where I could eventually offer advertisements. Like I mentioned before I am not really interested in pushing poker rooms or rakeback. I would rather promote poker merchandise or other goods.

My goal was to try and get the large base of online and live poker pros to switch over from twitter and use the TB widget that I created. Since my site cross-posts to twitter anyway I didnt think players would mind switching. I am thinking I need to offer some incentives / create prizes to award members for using TB widget...