maandag, januari 07, 2008
Other quiz sites: FunTrivia.com review
I will start reviewing other quiz sites in this blog. I'll compare them to what I'm doing with about2findout.com, share my impression, get some inspiration, and each time donate and steal one question or quiz (bring on the lawsuits!).
I'm starting with the biggest of them all: funtrivia.com. By far, it is the largest and most popular trivia site and it dates back to the nineties. It has 1.900.000 members (!), and over 91.000 quizzes with in total 1.700.000 questions. Wow, that's big. At first impression: big and ugly site, but let's not jump ahead. Similar to about2findout.com the site is all about solving and submitting trivia questions and quizzes, and scoring points and get high in the rankings. But the underlying philosophy of the two sites is completely different.
Funtrivia is a typical web 1.0 site, where the design of about2findout.com goes for 2.0 elements where ever possible.. Funtrivia.com works with categories, not tags. It has forums. It works with a small group of editors who review submissions (and reject up to 2/3th) and control the quality of the site. And like all sites of that time, it suffers from severe ugliness and complexity. The complexity is probably a direct result its size and its development over time to keep people interested. It took me a while to figure out the difference between quizzes and games. Also the point system is scary at first sight. You easily get lost in the system. As for the look and feel, well, I'll try to give it a positive spin: vintage looks are hot. So this site would look great in a web museum. You know, the time sites had Times New Roman fonts. And oh my god, all that clip art. All that clip art! And what do all the icons mean? It's a good thing looks aren't everything. (I'm not saying that about2findout.com is beautiful and as simple as it can get, but at least over the last few months it has gotten better in both areas :).
The sign up procedure is easy and works with e-mail validation. But why are children under 13 not allowed? You get a few e-mails from them and can subscribe to a daily mailing list. (I also just launched one: the Friday Quizday mailing.) Once you are a member your points are kept, you can participate in the internal mailing system, etc. As a direct result of the size of funtrivia.com, you are compared within an assigned 'class', that is roughly the 5000 people who signed up at about the same time as you, so comparison makes sense. The language of the site is English.
You can search for quizzes in a certain category and questions are either multiple choice, fill in the blank or true/false. I find it strange that you have to type in 'TRUE' or 'FALSE' instead of selecting it, but it is probably good exercise for you finger muscles. You can get questions via HTML forms or via Flash. With the Flash player you get immediate feedback, with the HTML form you need to submit everything first. They also have daily and hourly quiz games that reset automatically. The global challenge is a nice initiative: it runs over a couple of months and is really for quiz die-hards. I haven't found any multi player games but maybe I didn't find them. As said: it's a complex site and patience is not a virtue I have. You can get points and badges. For example I have been on the site for two days now and made about 20 quizzes. Now I have a first level badge and this is my score and ranking:
"Your score of 1680 points ranks you as #286,574 of 777,506 ranking quiz players worldwide." Not bad after just 2 days. I conclude that a couple of 100.000 quiz players made an account once and never came back. But that is something I know as well.
The business model of funtrivia.com is in part advertisement, in part premium membership and in part selling quizzes. There is limited advertisement, it doesn't bother at all. The mainly rely on the gold membership they try to sell you for 20$ per 6 months. As a gold member you get extra things, such as access to special tournaments and advanced statistics but also some stuff that I find quite basic such as the ability to upload an avatar, visual indications of what quizzes you have already done or unlimited score tracking (for regular members only 300 quizzes are stored). I have no idea if they are as successful as Flickr in selling premium memberships. They also sell trivia questions for use in your own quiz evenings.
About2findout.com on the other hand is just starting up and changes almost every day. It is still searching for a way to get sustainable income to cover the hosting fees. The plan is to do it via the Google Adsense on the question page. So far I haven't seen a Google dollar yet, but we are hopeful.
Some other random things I like about the site: the notions of teams (for example I'm part of the Belgian quizzes group), the fact that they suggest similar quizzes based on the one you did, the whole concept of tournaments spread over days or weeks to make sure people keep playing and come back. Some things other than the complex and ugly nature I don't like: I can't upload a quiz yet. I was ready to donate the Christmas or HIV quiz, but you need to be a member over one month and have done 100 quizzes before you are even allowed to submit a quiz that will then be rejected or accepted by the editors. I guess I'll have to keep going back to funtrivia for a month and keep you informed of the authoring capabilities in one month from now...
In summary: funtrivia.com is the biggest of its kind, and that is mainly due to its size (many people, many questions) which attracts newcomers and due to the quality of its questions database. But it is big and ugly and complex and partly free, partly paying. Above all, it is a typical web 1.0 site.
In comparison to about2findout.com, I must say they had to deal with a lot of things I don't need to because I have a limited amount of players and questions. The philosophy of the sites are different: I rely on the 'wisdom of the crowds' to guard the quality of the trivia, not on editors and all kinds of rules. But funtrivia does have something that I should introduce one of these months: a purpose. You can play tournaments etc, in about2findout.com you can only do a question and a quiz. It will improve once I get around programming the challenge, where you can bet points with your friends, but still, I need some reasons for people to come back to the site more often.
I'm starting with the biggest of them all: funtrivia.com. By far, it is the largest and most popular trivia site and it dates back to the nineties. It has 1.900.000 members (!), and over 91.000 quizzes with in total 1.700.000 questions. Wow, that's big. At first impression: big and ugly site, but let's not jump ahead. Similar to about2findout.com the site is all about solving and submitting trivia questions and quizzes, and scoring points and get high in the rankings. But the underlying philosophy of the two sites is completely different.
Funtrivia is a typical web 1.0 site, where the design of about2findout.com goes for 2.0 elements where ever possible.. Funtrivia.com works with categories, not tags. It has forums. It works with a small group of editors who review submissions (and reject up to 2/3th) and control the quality of the site. And like all sites of that time, it suffers from severe ugliness and complexity. The complexity is probably a direct result its size and its development over time to keep people interested. It took me a while to figure out the difference between quizzes and games. Also the point system is scary at first sight. You easily get lost in the system. As for the look and feel, well, I'll try to give it a positive spin: vintage looks are hot. So this site would look great in a web museum. You know, the time sites had Times New Roman fonts. And oh my god, all that clip art. All that clip art! And what do all the icons mean? It's a good thing looks aren't everything. (I'm not saying that about2findout.com is beautiful and as simple as it can get, but at least over the last few months it has gotten better in both areas :).
The sign up procedure is easy and works with e-mail validation. But why are children under 13 not allowed? You get a few e-mails from them and can subscribe to a daily mailing list. (I also just launched one: the Friday Quizday mailing.) Once you are a member your points are kept, you can participate in the internal mailing system, etc. As a direct result of the size of funtrivia.com, you are compared within an assigned 'class', that is roughly the 5000 people who signed up at about the same time as you, so comparison makes sense. The language of the site is English.
You can search for quizzes in a certain category and questions are either multiple choice, fill in the blank or true/false. I find it strange that you have to type in 'TRUE' or 'FALSE' instead of selecting it, but it is probably good exercise for you finger muscles. You can get questions via HTML forms or via Flash. With the Flash player you get immediate feedback, with the HTML form you need to submit everything first. They also have daily and hourly quiz games that reset automatically. The global challenge is a nice initiative: it runs over a couple of months and is really for quiz die-hards. I haven't found any multi player games but maybe I didn't find them. As said: it's a complex site and patience is not a virtue I have. You can get points and badges. For example I have been on the site for two days now and made about 20 quizzes. Now I have a first level badge and this is my score and ranking:
"Your score of 1680 points ranks you as #286,574 of 777,506 ranking quiz players worldwide." Not bad after just 2 days. I conclude that a couple of 100.000 quiz players made an account once and never came back. But that is something I know as well.
The business model of funtrivia.com is in part advertisement, in part premium membership and in part selling quizzes. There is limited advertisement, it doesn't bother at all. The mainly rely on the gold membership they try to sell you for 20$ per 6 months. As a gold member you get extra things, such as access to special tournaments and advanced statistics but also some stuff that I find quite basic such as the ability to upload an avatar, visual indications of what quizzes you have already done or unlimited score tracking (for regular members only 300 quizzes are stored). I have no idea if they are as successful as Flickr in selling premium memberships. They also sell trivia questions for use in your own quiz evenings.
About2findout.com on the other hand is just starting up and changes almost every day. It is still searching for a way to get sustainable income to cover the hosting fees. The plan is to do it via the Google Adsense on the question page. So far I haven't seen a Google dollar yet, but we are hopeful.
Some other random things I like about the site: the notions of teams (for example I'm part of the Belgian quizzes group), the fact that they suggest similar quizzes based on the one you did, the whole concept of tournaments spread over days or weeks to make sure people keep playing and come back. Some things other than the complex and ugly nature I don't like: I can't upload a quiz yet. I was ready to donate the Christmas or HIV quiz, but you need to be a member over one month and have done 100 quizzes before you are even allowed to submit a quiz that will then be rejected or accepted by the editors. I guess I'll have to keep going back to funtrivia for a month and keep you informed of the authoring capabilities in one month from now...
In summary: funtrivia.com is the biggest of its kind, and that is mainly due to its size (many people, many questions) which attracts newcomers and due to the quality of its questions database. But it is big and ugly and complex and partly free, partly paying. Above all, it is a typical web 1.0 site.
In comparison to about2findout.com, I must say they had to deal with a lot of things I don't need to because I have a limited amount of players and questions. The philosophy of the sites are different: I rely on the 'wisdom of the crowds' to guard the quality of the trivia, not on editors and all kinds of rules. But funtrivia does have something that I should introduce one of these months: a purpose. You can play tournaments etc, in about2findout.com you can only do a question and a quiz. It will improve once I get around programming the challenge, where you can bet points with your friends, but still, I need some reasons for people to come back to the site more often.
Labels: about2findout.com, funtrivia.com, quiz, trivia
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Funtrivia probably doesn't allow users 13 and younger because COPPA prevents said demographic from setting up such an account without parental supervision. It's the law.
# posted by 
: 5:23 PM
: 5:23 PM
Isn't stealing quizzes wrong? I know funtrivia.com has been able to get several websites to comply with copyright law after they stole quizzes from them.
And if you played more, you'd notice that the newer quizzes have a true/false format - it's only the oldest quizzes that make you type it in.
And if you played more, you'd notice that the newer quizzes have a true/false format - it's only the oldest quizzes that make you type it in.
You think you know so much about Funtrivia, but in reality you know very little.
It's about time you get off your high horse as a so-called "webmaster" and get real.
Pathetic...really.
It's about time you get off your high horse as a so-called "webmaster" and get real.
Pathetic...really.
# posted by : 1:25 AM
: 1:25 AM
Comment on laflicka: You are absolutely right, stealing is wrong. And don't worry, I haven't stolen any quiz from funtrivia and I don't intend to. I did intend to test out their authoring system and post some of my own questions, but I need to wait some more before I'm allowed to. In the day that I played, I didn't encounter the new type of true/false. When I find more time, I'll play some more. One thing strikes me on the copyright thing: on the one hand funtrivia gets all the questions donated for free by the community, and on the other hand they claim and protect the copyright of that and resell it. This site is different in design anyway: I make the site available for anyone to post their questions on. People can report wrong or inappropriate or stolen questions, and then action is taken to remove them. So far I had only few wrong questions and no reports of copyright infringement, hope it stays that way... Thanks for the comment! Bert
Comment on the pathetic anonymous one: first nasty comment on my blog, it was due :-) I feel you're missing the point: what you read were my personal FIRST IMPRESSIONS on funtrivia, not the report of an expert. I don't have the time to become a funtrivia expert anyway. First impressions are important but are just that: first impressions. (Let me tell you that this site currently has a 55% bounce rate, that means 55% of visitors only look at one page and surf away - I have a lot to improve on first impressions too!)
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