Sporcle on Facebook

In case you haven't seen it yet, we did manage to put out our Sporcle/Facebook application. Check it out and tell your friends. More games coming soon.

Speaking of Facebook, we are trying to be more active on the Sporcle/Facebook page. You may have noticed that we are doing more "Build a Quiz" posts and people have also started posting their own. So far this has been very well received and we plan to do at least one or more of these a week for a while.

Lastly, thanks to everyone who has posted, tweeted, or written in feedback. We have more than we can keep up with right now, so sorry for late responses. We read every bit of feedback that comes in, but it is challenging to write everybody back. That being said, we LOVE getting the feedback, it truly helps to make Sporcle better for everybody.
Thanks!

Sporcle is Back up

Hey all
Sporcle.com was down a for a few hours today (Monday, June 8th). Nothing to worry about, had to do some quick work here and there to accommodate increased traffic. Sorry for the loss of your Sporcle time.

Sporcle Handles

Hey Folks,
Sporcle is making a few improvements.

We just rolled out the notion of Sporcle Handles. Nicknames will be going away and Sporcle users will be required to choose a unique handle that will be used for your user profile page, as well as for comments.

If you want to see an example of one, check it out:
http://www.sporcle.com/user/SporcleAdmin/
If you haven't already, please go to your profile page (http://www.sporcle.com/profile.php) to select a handle.

Thanks!

Down times and other tidbits

Hey all
So yes, Sporcle was down for a few hours today. We solved the problem as quickly as we could and we have taken steps to make sure it doesn't happen again, but still, it was very sad not to be able to Sporcle for a while.

Also, we wanted to remind folks that we have a new Facebook page up and running. We have a lot of fans at the fans of Sporcle page and now we finally got our act together and have an official Facebook page. Check it out here.

Finally, we wanted to say thanks to everyone who keeps writing in with ideas and suggestions and praise. We are terribly behind on our replies. We read every email, but it is getting more and more challenging to reply to everyone. We love all the feedback, so thanks again and keep it coming.

Sporcle on!!

Updates and Best Boot-strapped Startup

Hey all
Been a while since we posted to the old blog. We are hoping to change that with some more consistency. Speaking of slacking, we are finally going through some of the older games and doing some auditing of the games so to speak.

You will notice that NBA and NHL coaches has been updated, some of the older movie games are going to the more modern format, i.e. including character names, and we are updating some of the other political games as well. If you see a game that needs updating, please send us feedback and let us know.

In other news, we are hoping folks can help us out with a little contest. We are a Seattle based company and we are hoping that you will nominate us for 'Best Boot-strapped Startup' at Seattle 2.0

Click on the link and help us out!!
Thanks

Sporcle would like to thank...

On the North American holiday of Thanksgiving Day, and as we approach our 10 millionth quiz played, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank just a few of the things that have helped Sporcle become what it is today:

Prototype.js and Scriptaculous - while not the only javascript helper libraries on the internet, they were the one most complete when we created Sporcle, and they make doing a lot of the cool things we do a lot easier.

Walter Zorn's DHTML drawing - this incomparable javascript drawing library allows us to draw pretty icons on games, fill in countries, etc. It's really fabulous.

Grey Matters - this blog focused on all things memory was one of the very first Sporcle fans, and also has created an apple widget that displays all the Can You Name games from around the internet (Sporcle, ahem, dominates this list a bit).

You! - Without you playing, commenting, feedbacking, error correcting, friend telling and all the rest, Sporcle wouldn't be today what it is. We are constantly striving for this site to be one of the most fun, addictive, and yes, educational sites around, and you go a long way towards it becoming that.

Open Web Award Voting!

Wow, thanks Sporcle folks, you are awesome! According to Mashable, there were 43,000 nominations made, and they picked the top 10 sites from each category for the voting round, and we made it in the Online Games category. (We consider ourselves a cross between entertainment, learning and pure unadulterated joy, but hey, we didn't pick the categories)

Below you'll find pre-filled widget for voting. In a move that is kind of annoying, apparently you can vote once per category per day. Sounds an awful lot like Mashable is trying to drive up traffic to their site....the nerve of some websites.

(Update: voting widget removed)