Blue monday for online betting site

Social gaming may be the popular trend, but it doesn’t always deliver the goods, it appears from a Tech Crunch report this week.
The publication Tech Crunch this week noted the quiet demise of online betting venture Dotblu, perhaps better known as BetBlu in its early years, when it was formed by high profile Silicon Valley angel investors back in 2007.
Investors included Youtube co-founder Jawed Karim, Kevin Hartz (co-founder of Xoom and Eventbrite), Flixster co-founder and CEO Joe Greenstein and Keith Rabois (Former PayPal and LinkedIn Executive, Tech Crunch reports. A later $2 million round was funded by Maples Investments and DE Shaw.
The company first launched as an online betting service and then changed its name and focus to social gaming. But on October 16 2009 the company shut everything down with a brief note to users that said: “Dear dotblu members: dotblu.com is down indefinitely. A big thanks to each of you for being part of our community for the past two and a half years.”
The note also asks users to stay in touch via their Facebook fan page.
“Most startups die, so this isn’t any particular slam on the founders or investors. They tried and they failed, and that’s the way of Silicon Valley,” is Tech Crunch’s succinct epitaph.