We’re rolling out two major changes to bookofodds.com this week. First, a new look for the homepage, and second, a new way for users to get more involved in the site via user polling:

“Hey! The homepage is different!”—Yup! It sure is. We’ve spent the last few months taking a long, hard look at the homepage and have determined what was working, what had to go, and what could be added to improve your experience. In talking to users, we found that a lot of people were confused by the homepage—it certainly looked nice, but it wasn’t clear where to start or what to do. So, we’ve tried to do a better job of highlighting the most important content, as well as making it clear the different ways you can use and interact with Book of Odds. What you’re seeing is a less cluttered and more intuitive window into our oddly fascinating world.

We’ve also made two very important additions—First, we’ve added an Odds Of The Day widget to the homepage. The widget is free for anyone to grab. By clicking the “Embed This” button you can take the widget and throw it on your blog, site, or anywhere else and begin receiving a daily feed of what we call Holy Cow Odds—You know, the ones that make you go, “Holy cow!” The second addition deserves its own paragraph:

Our crack team of software engineers (Beau Tremblay, Justin Refi, and co.) has been working to the bone on a new way for users to get involved with Book of Odds vis-a-vis user polls. We’ve launched a beta version of our polling product, which we hope you’ll use and help us refine ( by providing feedback!). Why is this a big deal?

1. The polls are created by YOU!—We’ll be creating some of our own as well, but we hope the majority of ideas will come from users.
2. Polls allow you to create a record of yourself—your opinions, characteristics, likes, dislikes, even experiences—by simply answering the questions put forth by fellow users. Every time you answer a poll your answer will be saved to your profile. Answer enough of them and you’ll have created a new format for self-examination. Even better—you’ll be able to see how your opinions and experiences change over time. Eventually, we’ll give you the ability to share this information with your friends via Facebook and see how you compare with one another.
3. We can show you things no other site can—Sure, we’ll show you how you fit in and compare with other users, but even better, we can find the hidden connections in the data and show you how the answers to disparate polls relate to one another (this sends my stat-geek meter to 11). For instance, maybe you’d like to know how height varies with hair color. Or, to get creative, how frequency of sky-diving varies with favorite member of The Beatles. Yeah—we can do that. The more polls you create and answer, the more fun things we can show you with the data (12).
4. Some of the most interesting questions are yet to be researched–By giving you the chance to ask these questions and users to answer them and make comments, we begin the process of exploring what you want to know (13!).

So, there you have it. We hope you like the new look of the homepage, and we hope you’ll answer some polls and even create a few of your own. And finally, please send us feedback and let us know what you think of the changes.

Some things to look forward to:

• Book of Odds is integrating with Facebook! Soon you’ll be able to login with your FB account and interact with your friends via bookofodds.com
• Facebook Application—We’re pretty excited about this one. You’ll learn more soon.