To celebrate the all England champions league final, we've put £1,000 into one of Helen's champions league pikums!  Why not give it a go - the entry stake is £2.  For everyone outside the UK - if you're a football fan, you'll definitely want to find a pikle pikum to compete in.  Good luck!

We continue to get great feedback from many Pikum members. We really appreciate all the feedback. We continue to make almost daily updates to the site.  Over the coming weeks we have a number of larger ideas that have come from user feedback for further simplifying challenges, getting from finding a pikum to playing, and more.  Keep on using the feedback feature - it is really helpful.

 On another note, be on the lookout for a big announcement from us soon - we're going to be doing something pretty special around the Champions League final.  If you're already playing some real money Pikums, you know that Pikum played for money (only available in the UK) is a pretty intense.  We're going to make it even sweeter... what am I talking about?  We'll let you know soon.... 

Last night we held a small event to celebrate Pikum's launch into private beta.  Soccer AM presenter Helen Chamberlain joined us to help introduce some friends and journalists to what Pikum is all about.  We had a good time and we got good feedback on Pikum! and our plans going forward. Thanks to everyone who attended.  Here's a pic of the team + Helen.

 

The number of users in Beta is growing nicely, and we've got some hotly contested Pikums that will be decided this week-end.  There are also some bloggers picking up on what we're up to and spreading the word about Pikum.  Check it out...

Pikum introduces Friendly Betting
By Chris F. Masse
Pikum — A new kind of betting game created and played between friends; Pikum is a new kind of betting game that can be played for bragging rights. In each Pikum, you compete with other players to see who can best predict the results of ...
Midas Oracle .ORG - http://www.midasoracle.org

Bet against your friends on Pikum!
A new social networking game, Pikum!, has launched in beta. Similar to an office sweepstake or pool, friends can bet for money on the outcome of major sporting events. Backed by Virgin USA, members can also host ‘Pikums’.
MeriNews: News Articles from... - http://www.merinews.com/index.jsp

Pikum Goes Live...
By Mr. Brown(Mr. Brown)
This week marks the UK launch of a new social betting game that we recently invested in called Pikum.com. In the words of Sir Richard "Pikum! is a completely new way to make bets...it's web-based and innovative; you can have fun making ...
Silicon Bowery - http://siliconbowery.blogspot.com/

The fix was just put onto our production system. I tested it and we're all good. Now when you challenge someone, the link in the email works and will take them directly to the Pikum you challenged them to.  Keep the feedback / bug reports coming. Our team will be working through the holiday week-end to continue to upgrade and tweak the site.

Thanks to everyone who's pointed out that the link that's included when you're challenged to a Pikum isn't working.  We found it first thing this morning. It's been fixed by our dev team, we're testing, and it'll be implemented onto our production application by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you can get to all your challenges through the link on the challenge email. You can find any challenges there.  There are a number of cool pikums in the system - both for pikles and for pounds.  If you're in, make sure you've found one of the ones focusing on this week-ends premiership action.

As Johannes and I mentioned in our posts about launching, private betas is the test, listen, and iterate mode.  Last night we made a number of changes and they're live on the site.  Here are some of the areas we improved:

 

                Change made to:

1.       Biggest Pots (biggest prize pools)

2.       Featured Pikums

3.       Invite Contacts Options

4.       Most Active Pikums

5.       Recent Activity

6.       User Bulletin Board

7.       Main Stylesheet

8.       Invite Friends

9.       Invite Contacts

10.   My Challenges

11.   Play Pikum

12.   Play Pikum Confirm

13.   View Pikum

14.   View Profile

We'll continue to iterate (I probably wont' post changes everyday - however we will try to keep you up to date as we improve), so keep the feedback coming! Rock on...

 

 

I'm starting to see some of the final features that will be going into Beta on our test system.  Some really cool stuff.  Our revamped design is also creeping into all sections of the site.  There's still cleaning up to do, but things are coming together really nicely.  With P-day coming soon, I am starting to wonder... who will be the first person to create a real money Pikum?  Who will be the person to create a Pikle Pikum?  Who will be the first person to sign up who isn't part of our beta invite list?  Who will be the winner of the first ever real money Pikum?  What will the prize pool be?  How quickly can we go from 0 to 100 to 1000 Pikum members?  All really exciting questions which we'll soon have answers for.  Stay tuned.

It’s coming together nicely and although our team is working amazingly long hours and pushing to get every last bit done, we’re all going to be proud of what we’ve built so far, and know that although it’ll still definitely be beta, we’ll continue working hard to improve and provide a great entertainment product that people really enjoy!