Posts filed under 'General'
Picture the crowds of huddled people waiting in line for hours on end… No I’m not talking about the upcoming great depression, I’m talking about Black Friday!
At Buxr we have taken a sideline view of Black Friday, because we ultimately feel that the best deals are to be found online, and frankly, who wants to be elbowed in the eye in a scrum for this year’s latest Tickle Me Elmo doll? But because this is a “social deals” site, at least that’s what we tell ourselves, we let the users drive the site to how THEY see fit. Very democratic don’t you think? 
Well as a result of this unchecked freedom, one of our users (identity concealed to protect the innocent) has taken over the discussion forums, and swamped us with some very fine Black Friday deals. I have to admit, I have scanned these deals, and I’m ready to shove women and children out of my way to claim my “Samsung 50″ Widescreen Plasma HDTV (Model # PN50A400) – $899.99” at Circuit City Any real bargain hunter would agree (I’m kidding… please no emails!)
So if you have little time like myself, you might just be interested in “the best” Black Friday deals. Well in that case, long time Buxr member, and appropriately named Mr. Cheap poses that question in the “What is your hottest Black Friday Deal?” topic. Stop by and throw in your 2 cents, and perhaps you can save other members time in the Black Friday line and even a bad case of frost-bite.
OK, so let’s recap:
• Buxr is a great social bargain hunting site (no bias here).
• We don’t really care about Black Friday (OK we really do).
• Buxr member’s DO care about Black Friday (this is why we care).
• Come to the discussion forums, and find out what’s going on Black Friday (and share your thoughts!)
November 20th, 2008
We are proud to announce the launch of the Buxr discussion forums! It’s not just about deals anymore…
Our goal for Buxr has always been to launch a social bargain hunting community, and now we think we are one step closer to that goal. With the launch of the forums, you can move the conversation or argument to the discussion groups. It’s very easy to use, and everyone is welcome.
To keep it simple, we’ve broken the forums into 6 categories:
- Product – Discuss or share your favorite deals from Buxr, ask questions about any products
- Coupon – Discuss or share the latest coupons (great for local coupons or special interest coupons)
- Sale – Discuss or share a sale or a company promotion
- Merchant – Have something nice or NOT so nice to say about a merchant, it goes here.
- Buxr – Where members come to discuss features, issues, and everything else regarding the Buxr community.
- Other – This is really the members lounge — anything from politics to self-help can go here! This category belongs to the community.
Both Yan and I are really excited about the forums. We think it is an essential part of the success for this site. So we invite and encourage you to come join the discussion!
Finally, I want to tell you that we have so many exciting features that we are planning to add, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, so hold on to your hats and stay tuned.
Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to the site, we appreciate your efforts.
October 12th, 2008
We have a small announcement to make. Over the past week or so we have rolled out two new features that we want to mention here. They are Deal Alerts and Wish Lists.
Deal Alerts
Have you ever wanted a gadget but the price seemed too high? Have you ever planned to visit a store but postponed your visit until you found the right coupon? Deal Alerts are there to help you with these and other shopping tasks. Here are the two types of alerts we have implemented:
- Product Specific Alerts – To add this alert, find the deal you like, go to the page for that deal, and click on the ‘Deal Alert’ link under the pricing information. When our members submit a new deal for this product you will immediately receive an email. Like the product but not the price? Set the price field when you add your alert and we will only bug you if your desired price is met.
- General Deal Alerts – These can be added from your account and can be narrowed down by the store, deal type (product, coupon, or sale) or by a keyword in the deal title/description. To add this alert go to the Alerts Page in your account and click on the Add Alert button
You can delete any alerts you added from the Alerts Page, plus you can use that page to trace how your alerts are performing. Right now all you can see is just how many emails we sent you for each alert, but we will add more useful data in the future.
Wish Lists
On an average day we receive around 50-70 deal submissions and it is very easy to miss some deals you liked and were planning to buy. Wish Lists is just the tool to solve this task. Wish List is in essence a personal list of deals that you tagged for future reference.
To add a deal to your Wish List go to the deal page and click on that green plus icon in the right corner under deal description. If you are signed in then the green plus will turn into a ‘check’ symbol indicating the deal is added. If you click on the ‘check’ symbol it bill bring you right to your Wish List. Another way to see your Wish List is by going to your profile and clicking on the Wish List tab.
Please note that unlike Deal Alerts all Wish Lists are shared which means everyone can see what you added to your list as well as you can check what others have in their Wish List by going to the user’s profile. This can be useful if you want to surprise your Buxr friend with a hot deal and not sure what they like.
Summary
Deal Alerts and Wish Lists are just two small steps on our long way of turning Buxr into the ultimate bargain hunting destination. Please check them out and let us know what you think. Also don’t hesitate to bring out other ideas on how we can make Buxr a better deal site!
September 29th, 2008
There is not a single day that goes by that we don’t add something new on Buxr. It is very hard to keep up with all the changes even for us, let alone Buxr members. I decided to write this blog post to go over some of the recent changes to refresh my memory and help you better understand how the website works from inside.
Sorting deals
Up until recently all deals were sorted by the time they are submitted. This is great if you want to keep track of new submissions and also very useful for figuring out who we should give a credit when the same deals (duplicates) are submitted. Starting this week the default sorting is by Activity. This means that whenever you comment on a deal (or flag it) the deal will go to the top of the deals list. You can change the sorting at any time using the ‘Customize the view’ box on the right side bar.
Flagging deals
You already know you can flag a deal using the drop-down list on the deal page. This helps our admins find problem deals and resolve any issues sooner. What you probably don’t know is that if 3 members flag a deal as ‘Dupe’ they will move it back to the ‘Upcoming’ queue. Also if 3 members flag it as ‘Dead’ it will be automatically marked as expired. It takes just one member to expire a deal if it is the owner who is flagging it, but this will only work on recently submitted deals.
Upcoming queue
All deals that members submit first go to the Upcoming queue for review. You can check the deals in the queue and flag them if you see problems with the submission. If 3 members positively review a deal it will automatically go to the main list. If at least one member negatively reviews the deal it will stay in the Upcoming until we verify it. We encourage you to visit the list and help us sort out the upcoming deals. Your feedback helps us fix incorrect submissions and eliminate duplicate deals early on.
Auto-moderation
If we notice that your deal submissions are consistently accurate we will include you in a test run of our latest feature — auto-moderation. For you this will mean that your new deals will no longer sit in the Upcoming queue but instead will go right into the main page. The ‘auto-moderation’ title is revocable and if we notice that the quality of your submissions degrades we will take you off auto-moderation. Are you interested? Drop us an email and we will send you a list of items you should pay attention to during your submissions to be included into the test-run.
Price history
You might have already noticed that some deals have a Price History list under the description. This is the latest feature we added to the site. The historic prices are built based on past deal submissions and are intended to provide more data for assessing the hotness of a deal.
What is coming next
The next big thing we are working on is a discussion board for the members to socialize and discuss anything that doesn’t fit well with the deal comment pages. So far Monthly Contest has been the page where you come to talk but it is too flat and too messy, so we want to create a better place for you all to hang out!
This seems to be all I can recall at the moment. I will update this blog post if I notice anything missing. Meanwhile please let us know what you think about this list and also tell us in the comments what features you would like to be added in the future!
August 28th, 2008
In case you missed it, this month we announced our exciting new Refer a Friend contest. Just refer your friends to the Buxr community, and you could win fabulous cash prizes!
Our deal contests need more participants to judge on the value of deals you guys are submitting and by inviting new friends you help us make these contests more meaningful.
As of today, we are almost half way through the contest with no qualified referrals. This is bad news for us, but good news for you because winning a Buxr contest has never been so easy. Just referring a few friends might be enough for you to win this month’s $150 first prize!
We’ve made referring friends easy with many options such as ‘Share a Deal’ email, the Buxr badge, a text link, or our cool widget. Click here to see more details about our contest, and find out how you can participate and win!
August 15th, 2008
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