Frequently Asked Questions


What is dotblu?
dotblu is a community dedicated to friendly competitive online gaming. Our members compete in a variety of different online games, like prediction questions, quizzes and online flash games. They compete against friends in a fun and friendly atmosphere for blubucks, our virtual currency, and use their profile to keep up with their friends and show off the wealth of blubucks they've accumulated.


Is dotblu free?
dotblu is a free service. There are some optional features for users who are willing to pay for extra privileges, but you can enjoy the games and questions for free.


Is the money real?
No, blubucks and tokens have no monetary value whatsoever and cannot be exchanged for any regular currency. They are a convenient way of keeping score to see how you rank against other users.


What are tokens?
tokens are a separate currency on dotblu that are available for purchase from dotblu, or can be earned by taking short surveys or earning rewards for the game. tokens can be used to advance your score, purchase special profile items, or unlock extra privileges on dotblu. You are not required to purchase tokens to participate on dotblu.


How can I earn blubucks?
There are many ways to earn blubucks. Here are some of the many ways you can do so:

Log in every day
If you log in on a daily basis, we’ll give you a 1,000 blubucks. We love it when you come back!

Earn Bet Stars and create questions
Bet Star awards are special achievements honoring the best question writers on dotblu, the blue BetStar is for players who have created 10 or more questions with at least 10 players each. BetStar recipients receive 1,000 blubucks for every Prediction and Majority Wins question they create (note that you don't get 1,000 blubucks for creating a quiz)

Invite your friends and make sure they sign up to dotblu
When you invite your friends to dotblu, they’ll get an invitation to sign up. When they sign up, you’ll immediately get 500 blubucks.

Win questions
If you have enough blubucks, you can place wagers throughout dotblu. Answering questions is a fun and interesting way to show what you think about different topics. A good way to win questions quickly is by wagering on questions that are closing soon. To do this, just click on the “Closing Soon” tab at the top of the page and start wagering away!

Win game challenges
Games are a fun way to win blubucks. If you have enough blubucks, you can create a public (anyone can join) or private (only people you invite can join) game challenge. Everyone that plays has to risk blubucks to join the challenge. Whoever gets the most points wins the game challenge and gets the pool.

Play games
You will win blubucks as your score increases on any of our games.


How can I earn tokens?
You can purchase tokens via PayPal from the 'buy tokens' link at the top of the page.

You can earn tokens by completing short surveys in the 'earn tokens' link at the top of the page

Also, if you win a Question of the Day award you will receive 5 tokens, and if one of your bets is featured on the front page, you will receive 1 Token.


How can I add friends on dotblu?
You can add other users to your friends list by going to their profile page and clicking the 'add as friend' button at the top of the page. Or if you know your friends' email addresses, you can use the 'add' feature from the 'community' menu at the top of the page.


What is Pwned?
Pwned! Is a new game that lets you buy and sell other users and hold their photos on your profile page. As you pwn more photos, you'll earn more blubucks.

It's easy to play, you can scroll through photos of users and when you see one you want to pwn, click 'Pwn It!' Then you'll pwn that photo until another user buys it, and you'll make blubucks! You can upload up to eight photos of yourself to Pwned, so other users can buy and sell you, which will help you earn blubucks as well.


How do I answer a question?
Answering a question is easy! Find one of the many questions all over dotblu and click on the title of the question to open the question detail page. Once inside, click on the answer that you think is right and sit back and wait for your winnings.
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What is the pool/cost?
The cost is how much you risk when you answer a question, it's how much you will lose if you lose the settlement. The pool is the total amount that all players have risked, the cost from each player added together. When the question is settled, the pool will be distributed evenly between all the players.


What happens when the question is settled as a draw?
When a question is settled as a draw, the cost is returned to each player.


What's in the dotblu store?


The dotblu store is a way to spend all your hard earned blubucks on a virtual world to decorate your profile. You can purchase landscapes, houses and cars at the moment for prices ranging from a few thousand to a million blubucks. You can only shop at the store if you have a positive balance on dotblu -- if you haven't borrowed any blubucks. (Not sure if you owe blubucks? Click here to check your balance, and pay them back if you do!) The store is accessible from the 'store' menu at the top of the page.  Or just head over to www.dotblu.com/page/vstore/store.aspx

The dotblu store also features tools, which grant special privileges on dotblu, like x-ray vision, which will allow you to see the comments of a majority wins or quiz question before you answer, heckle blockers, which deflects heckles back to the user that heckled you, and radar, which allows you to see who has visited your profile.  tools are only available for purchase with tokens.


I got an email that says I received a gift, how do I get it?

dotblu allows users to send each other gifts from the dotblu store, as well as providing a free gift after you are invited by your friends. To receive your gift log in to dotblu and go to your profile. Click the "Edit Profile" button on the top, then click "Edit World". Then click the button at the top that says 'gift list' and make sure you've accepted any gifts there. Then go back to the 'Edit World' page and scroll down until you see your gift and click 'display on profile'.


How do I send a gift?

You can give gifts after you buy items at the dotblu store. Go to the 'store' tab to access the virtual store. Once you've purchased items, from the "Home" tab, go to your "edit profile" page, where there will be another button that says "Edit My World". If you click there you'll see a list of the items you currently have and each one will have an option that says "Give to a Friend". Click there and enter the username or email address of your friend, and your gift will be sent to them.


How do I play the games?

Playing games on dotblu is easy. Access the arcade using the "Play" menu at the top of the screen, which will take you to the game lobby, where you can view all the games available on dotblu and descriptons of each game. You can either click "Play Game" to just play for fun, or "Challenge Others" to play against other dotblu users for blubucks.


Can I win blubucks playing games?

Yes.  You will receive blubucks if your score exceeds a certain amount.  

Also, you can challenge other users to game challenges, and play against other dotblu users to win blubucks. There are two types of challenges, public and private. A public challenge can be played by anyone and can have up to 7 players on it, the creator and 6 invitations. It will last either until all the spots on the challenge are filled, or until the close date selected, which is either 24 hours, 5 days or 10 days. Each player puts up a cost and the highest score of the challenge takes all.

Private challenges work the same way, except that you select users from your friends list, and only those users may take the challenge. To create a challenge, go to the game you'd like to challenge others to play in the game lobby, and click "Challenge Others".

Recently, we added a class system to the game challenges. Each game player is designated a class based on their score at the game, and can only accept challenges from those in their class or higher, so that users who are extremely talented at the games won't be able to take blubucks from others unfairly.


What are all the different kinds of questions for?
We have a variety of different kinds of questions to fit the needs of dotblu users, so that you can predict the future, quiz people's general knowledge, or get their opinion on any topic in the world. These are the different kinds of questions we feature on dotblu and how to use them:

Prediction questions are to predict the future. All the sports questions, election, and awards show questions fall in this category, they are questions with outcomes that will be known, but can't be known now.

Majority Wins questions are to poll other dotbluters about themselves or their opinions. Any question that cannot be factually settled should be Majority Wins, such as "Which is the best band?" or "Who's your favorite celebrity?" or "What's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?" For Majority Wins questions, the comments and outcome will be hidden until you place a question -- that way, people will vote according to their opinions, and won't be tempted to read the comments to decide the probable outcome.

A Quiz is a question with a known outcome -- a fact, a math problem, a history lesson, anything that's factual and verifiable. When you create a quiz, you'll enter the answer to your quiz right away, so when a player clicks on the right answer, they they wil know their answer is correct instantly.  The question will then be settled and you will receive a bigger reward depending on how many users answered the question incorrectly, so more difficult questions pay off better!


How do I write a question?
You want to create a question? Awesome! User created questions are what makes dotblu work! This section will walk you through the question creation process, but it is highly recommended that you play a few questions before trying to create one, so you understand how the process works.

Use the "Create" menu at the top of the screen to create a question, and the first thing you'll need to do is decide whether your question should be a Prediction question, Majority Wins or a Quiz. See the answer above to explain the different types of dotblu questions.

Some details are the same for all types. The first thing you need to do is enter your question. The question should be descriptive enough to get people to play on it. People should know just by reading the question what your question's all about, so they'll know if it suits their interests. For example: "Which NFL team is better, the Patriots or the Cowboys?" is a much better question than "Which is better?"

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After that you can enter a web address to link to in your question. Got a great news story to write a question about? Put the URL in that field so dotblu can link back to it. This step is optional but a great asset when you're making current and topical questions. After that you can enter the title of your news story, if there is one.

Then you can enter any further description your question requires in the 'Description' field. Note that this step is optional, but very useful in clarifying details about what your question is all about and how you intend to settle it.

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Next you have to enter the choices for your question. Note that it is very important that your choices match the question that you've written, and that you try and cover all possible outcomes. You may enter a minimum of two and as many as ten choices for each question.
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Also at this step you may add pictures to illustrate your question choices by clicking "add image". You may either upload a picture from your computer or choose one from Google image search.
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Next you must choose the closing date of your question. This is the date that questionting will end so the question can be settled, either by dotblu or the original user, and the winners will receive their pool. If you are writing an outcome based question, make sure that it closes before the outcome will be known, so no one will cheat. For example, if a football game is on Sunday, you want the question to close on Saturday.

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If it is a Majority Wins question, settlement will happen automatically. If it is a prediction question, you must choose a settlement date as well. The settlement date is the date the question must be decided by, and outcome based questions are settled by the user who created them. It is recommended you give yourself at least a week to settle a question.

Next choose your cost. This is the amount of blubucks that players on your question will risk when they play. You can enter as little as 1 BluBuck or as many as 10,000, but keep in mind that a high cost may scare off potential players.

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After that you must choose the category your question belongs in, Entertainment, Technology, Science, World News, Business, Sports, Gaming, or Personal. Please try and make sure that you're choosing the right category for your question as it will help other users find it easily.

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And that's it! Click "Create question" and dotblu will show you the new question you've created. Now you can send it to all your friends and see what they think!


What kinds of things should I write about?
dotblu has 8 categories that you can write questions about at the moment: Entertainment, Technology, Science, World News, Business, Sports, Gaming and Personal, but you can write about anything you want. Hopefully your question will have a broad appeal to attract many users to play it.

You cannot post questions that are sexually explicit, contain nudity, or are hateful to other users. These kinds of questions will be deleted and posting them could result in the deletion of your account.


When should a question be Majority Wins?
Any question without a factual outcome should be Majority Wins, so there is a way to settle them. This includes all matters of opinion, ('Who's the Best?' 'What's your favorite?') and personal questions specific to each user. ('Are you a boy or a girl?' 'What's the first think you do in the morning?' etc.)

The only questions that shouldn't be majority wins are prediction questions, as in sports matches, election, and upcoming news events, and factual quizzes on history, geography and trivia.


How do I settle a question?
When you log in and are directed to http://www.dotblu.com/home on the left side of the page just under your name you should see an alert that "1 closed question needs to be settled!" Clicking there will take you to your "To Settle" list where you can find your old questions.

Settlequestion1

Once you open the question, on the right side of the page there will be a list of actions you can take, one of them being "Settle question". Note that the "Settle question" button will only appear if it is a Prediction question, and not Majority Wins or Quiz. Majority wins and Quiz questions settle automatically.


What do the star ratings mean?
Starrating Star ratings are an indication of how accurately you settle a Prediction question. After a user has settled a Prediction question you have the option of giving the settlement a rating of 1-5 stars, depending on how quickly and accurately the question was settled. If a question is settled incorrectly, and the creator's rating goes below 2, they will not be able to create more than one question a day until their star rating goes above 2 again.


I made a mistake! Can I edit my question?
No, but you can contact the admin at feedback@dotblu.com and ask them to edit your question for you. Be sure to include the URL of the question you've created.


I picked the wrong settlement choice! How can I change that?
You can't, but if you contact the admin at feedback@dotblu.com, they can change the settlement for you. Be sure to include the URL of the question.


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A few things to keep in mind: when you create a question, you have to pick the close date and the settle date. You will be penalized if you don't settle the question between those dates, so be sure to leave yourself enough time to do it. Also, if a question is majority wins, it doesn't have to be settled, that happens automatically, so be sure when you create a question that the question you're writing about shouldn't be majority wins.


How can I win the Question of the Day?
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The Question of the Day is an award that features several excellent, creative and well written questions every day so every user can see it. If you get the Question of the Day award, you'll be honored with an achievement on your profile page along with a prize of 10,000 blubucks. Here are a few pointers to make your question more likely to win Question of the Day:

  • You ask a creative and thought provoking question.
  • The content of the question 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 description.
  • Predictions are more likely to be chosen than Majority Wins questions.
  • The Question of the Day should include pictures to illustrate the question's choices.
  • The cost must be less than 5000 blubucks.

What are these BetStar Awards and how can I get one?
Icon_BetStar_32 Icon_betstarsilver_32Icon_betstargold_32The Bet Star awards are special achievements honoring the best question writers on dotblu. There are currently three different BetStar awards -- the original, blue BetStar is for players who have created 10 or more questions with at least 10 players each. The silver BetStar is for players who have created 50 or more questions with at least 20 players each, and the gold BetStar is for players who have created 100 or more questions with at least 20 players each. BetStar recipients receive 1000 blubucks for every Prediction and Majority Wins question they create (note that you don't get 1000 blubucks for creating a quiz).


Why was my question deleted?
There are several reasons why a question may be deleted. questions that are repeatedly flagged will be examined for possible deletion, as well as any of the following:

  • Questions with strong sexual content and/or nudity (Users who post nudity will also be deleted.)
  • A question without any real choices, or two choices that are identical.
  • questions that are hateful or harmful to other users
  • Any attempts to cheat to gain blubucks ("Free points!", etc.)
  • A question with extremely bad spelling and grammar to a point where it is not understandable.
  • A question that is not in the proper category according to the rules. (Prediction, Majority Wins, Quiz.) Please see this question for information on the proper categories.
  • Simple math questions (1+1, 2+2)
  • Prediction questions that allow users to affect the outcome by participating. ("How many players will this question have?" "How many comments will this question have?")

Can I make a question quizzing people on history, geography, music, etc.?
Yes! Those are quiz questions. In a quiz, you pick the answer and players who answer correctly automatically get 100 blubucks. If they pick the wrong answer, they lose 100 blubucks. Please note that Quiz questions created as Prediction or Majority Wins questions will be deleted.


Hey, so I can just post a question telling everyone to click 'yes' and we all get free money, right?
Wrong. In order to win any blubucks, someone must bet against you. If everyone answers 'yes', then the pool is divided evenly among all the yes votes, so everyone just gets their ante back. Questions like these will be deleted because they're misleading.


I clicked the wrong button, can you change my answer for me?
Sorry, but no. Once you've placed a question not even the admins can take it back for you.


How can I delete my account?
To delete your account, log into dotblu and from the "Home" menu, click on "Manage Account". At the bottom of the page, you'll see an option to delete your account. Or go to http://www.dotblu.com/page/user/account.aspx and scroll to the bottom. We hope you don't use this option though, we'd hate to see you go! :)


I can't upload my picture, what gives?
Chances are the picture you're trying to upload is too big. dotblu doesn't allow uploads over 500KB.


How can I change my password?
To change your password, log into dotblu and from the "Home" menu, click on "Manage Account". You can change your password at the top of the page. You may change many other details there as well.


I lost my password! What can I do?
You can reset your password by going to the password reset page here: https://www.dotblu.com/page/main/passwordreset.aspx Wait for the password to be emailed to you. Attempting to reset your password too many times could result in your account being locked.


How can I report a lewd or offensive question?
Sexually explicit questions, nudity, and questions that are hateful to other users are not permitted on dotblu. Please report them to violations@dotblu.com


How do I know how many blubucks I have?
On your profile there is a "Statistics" section. If you want to see more there is an option to "See All"


How did I borrow blubucks and how do I pay them back?
You borrow blubucks from dotblu in increments of 10,000 when you play more blubucks than you have in your Balance. This will happen automatically so you can keep answering questions when you run out of blubucks. You may borrow up to 100,000 blubucks from dotblu, but after that you will have to pay them back to continue playing questions and game challenges. Before you can purchase anything in the dotblu store, you have to pay back the blubucks you've borrowed. You can pay back your blubucks from the stats page.


What does 'Net Worth'/'Balance' mean?
Every user starts with 30,000 blubucks to play questions and game challenges with. If you play more then you have, you go have to borrow 10,000 blubucks from dotblu.

Your 'Balance' is how many blubucks you can play without going bust and borrowing from dotblu. Your 'Net Worth' is the score that takes everything into account: wins, losses and borrowed blubucks.


What is Meebo IM?
Meebo IM lets you instant message your friends that are on dotblu. Keep in touch with others with Meebo IM.

For more details about Meebo IM, check out the following page:
http://wiki.meebo.com/doku.php?id=dotblu