Whether you're here because of Sore Thumbs Blog, because you're a fan of our previous work on 1UP.com and Electronic Gaming Monthly, or because of a series of totally unrelated and random events...welcome! Welcome to super pre-beta Bitmob 1.0.
About Us
We're a bit "off the grid" here at Bitmob. Plenty of other sites do a great job of delivering the same news, previews, and reviews you've been used to for years. We're here to do something a little different...to offer an alternative. Instead of covering games the way we're supposed to, we'll cover them the way we want to. That means finding new angles on traditional stories, having conversations surrounding a game well after it's released, looking more behind the scenes, and exploring gaming culture in interesting new ways.
Stay tuned to Bitmob -- what you see now is only the beginning. We have many fixes and small improvements coming soon (profile pages with bios, a voting system, friending, etc.) and much, much cooler things planned for down the line once we grow big enough, so we hope you'll continue to support us as we evolve.
About You
At Bitmob, we believe in working with the community to create great content. Hell, you understand gaming just as much as we do...perhaps even more. So when you register with us and become active on the site -- whether you write a profile post or create a video show, an audio podcast with your friends, or maybe something we haven't even thought of yet -- if we like it, we'll do our best to make sure people see it.
We want Bitmob to be the best place for great content creators to build a reputation and get noticed -- by their peers, by our staff, and by the big world outside of Bitmob. Which bring us to...
How Bitmob Works
First of all, whenever you post something to Bitmob, a quick teaser of your story will go to the Mobfeed, a catchall for every update from anywhere on this site. Then, if your content grabs our attention, we'll take a closer look. If we feel your stuff is top-notch material, we'll editorially vet your post for quality control, then promote it to the front page to sit alongside our own content.
Of course, all posts (from you or from us) won't be suitable for front-page promotion -- maybe you feel like bitching about how confusing last night's episode of Lost was, for example. Don't worry...they still have a place here. Think of Bitmob as a blog network of sorts, so anyone can stop by and check out whatever it is you have to say.
So you can see why we want you to register with your real name and email address! It would sure suck if we (or some other organization) were to recognize your awesomeness and wanted to hire you for some freelance or full-time work, only to not be able to get a hold of the real you. We also hope that real names will make our users more accountable and less likely to recommend death by fire to those with differing opinions.
Submission Guidelines
We're looking for smart, funny, and insightful content that complements what we're doing on Bitmob. That's about as guideline-y as we're going to get. Explain how 15 minutes of Street Fighter 4 a day can lead to a slimmer, more youthful you, post an interesting video and add your commentary, confront your Peggle addiction, whatever.
Spell check is your friend who really likes you, and we stop reading after the first "teh" or "lol" or lower-case letter used to start off a new sentence. Offensive stuff gets deleted.
What else?
Well, we'd like to thank these few specific folks:
Rich McGrath of GameTopius (our developer)
Derrick Hopkins of Dead Pixel Live (our other developer)
Karen Chu of Chu Chu Rocketeer! and Karen Chu's Twitter (our designer)
Jeff Buczek of...himself (our CSS dude)
...and everyone else who helped us out in any and all capacities -- but seriously, that would take a few hours and a few thousand words...and we're deathly afraid of leaving someone out. So better (and easier) for us to say: Thanks everyone who helped us out in any and all capacities!
We hope you enjoy our site. Leave your constructive feedback in the comments of our posts, or send all your non-porn emails to: letters@bitmob.com. Also, please join us on Facebook and Twitter for bonus fun times.
Dan "Shoe" Hsu and Demian Linn
Co-founders, Bitmob.com
