Introducing BBO on MSN

[fred]

As our the morning of July 31, it is now possible to access BBO through msn.com:

 

Link to BBO on MSN

 

(You can also read an interview with me through this page!)

 

You will be able to log in to BBO (for free of course) through this link using our new (Flash) client program. What you will see is similar to what you see when you log in through the yellow "click to play or watch bridge" link on our home page (www.bridgebase.com).

 

But the MSN "portal" to BBO contains some differences that we hope will help make life easier and better for the large number of people who enjoyed playing bridge on MSN (known by many as "the Zone") before their old bridge system was shut down late last year. For example, after you log in there is a button on the "home screen" that will take the user directly into what experienced BBO users would refer to as a "public club" where we expect the MSN players to congregate and play.

 

Other than the expected influx of more players, tables, and tournaments, expect life and BBO to go on like normal - nothing will have really changed as far as our existing members are concerned.

 

Our partnership with MSN in this venture is good news for both BBO and for bridge. MSN (a division of Microsoft) is very good in an important area in which we are hopeless: mass marketing. For example, something like 100 million people visit msn.com everyday. A "play bridge" link to MSN's BBO portal on their home page would put our game in a powerful spotlight and hopefully result in some new people learning to play.

 

As those of you who came to the party that MSN hosted at the recent ACBL Nationals in Las Vegas know, the people at MSN do seem serious about promoting this site. This party was on a completely different scale that what you would normally see at a bridge tournament - free booze, the food was actually good, the entertainment and decor were first rate, and among the many valuable door prizes was a laptop computer.

 

The people we have been working with at MSN who seem so interested in promoting bridge are young (at 43 I feel like an old man!), energetic, creative, and brilliant. I expect that Uday and I will continue to learn a lot through our association with this group.

 

Those of you with good memories who have been following the development of our Flash client may recall an old Forums post in which I referred a big and secret idea as one of the advantages of a web-based BBO client. The MSN portal to BBO is our first official example of what I was talking about.

 

The most obvious advantage of a web-based client, of course, is that it runs on a web page (ie in a browser). This minimizes the need for downloading, installing, configuring firewalls, etc. and makes it easier for people with various types of computers to access our site.

 

Less obvious, however, is not just that it runs on a web page, but that it can be run from *any* web page. There is no limit to the number of portals to BBO that we can put on the Internet. We hope that a lot of people will want them! National Bridge Federations, groups that run tournaments, hobbyists who run bridge web sites...

 

Each of these BBO portals would allow you to log in to BBO, but each portal could also have its own custom "featured areas", specifically designed for the target audience. Essentially we now have the ability to give anyone their own custom online bridge site.

 

And when people type "online bridge" into their search engines, they will get 100s of links to BBO portals and only a few mentions of the other bridge sites that we do not name here :)

 

We are not quite ready to start launching any more BBO portals, so please don't e-mail me (yet) to ask about how you or your site can be involved. I will provide more information regarding details once such details have been resolved.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com