Flusta: Betting for Bragging Rights

17
Jun

Flusta: Betting for Bragging Rights

author: editor category: ReadWriteWeb

The internet has settled a great number of disputes in my household. The star of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is NOT John Cusack, George W. Bush is NOT older than Mick Jagger, and the chorus for Here Comes the Hotstepper is NOT “Word Em Up”. For this reason I was excited to hear that social gambling site Flusta launched to offer a dispute settlement platform.

Similar to online competition site Strutta user votes are tallied to determine the winner of a particular competition. However, while Strutta gives users the option to vote on a variety of videos, Flusta is based on binary oppositions.

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For instance, questions range from serious ones like “Do You Believe in God?” to more lighthearted ones, like “Would you have sex with Paris Hilton?”. Each question answered earns the user points. These points can then be used to create bets or accept wagers. Creating a bet requires coming up with a simple question, your answer, and an answer from your opponent. Your opponent’s answer cannot be too unrealistic, or no one will take the bet. The key is to encourage at least one person to take on your wager. For this reason, new users are eager to coax their friends into betting. Additionally, to further sway votes, members can promote their bets through Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and even LinkedIn.

In most cases, it takes 17 random voters to determine a winner within a particular category, and that winner receives points based on the amount wagered. If you remember that this site is not meant to settle factual disputes but rather popularity-based disputes, then it’s extremely easy to get hooked on it. Additionally, we really enjoy the site’s clean design and stylized avatars. While Flusta is obviously still in its early stages, once the community gains momentum and bets can be determined from a larger subset, the same framework can be used for AB testing and corporate polling.

Flusta also has a great opportunity to monetize through the sale of points and the incorporation of featured sponsored polls. It’ll be interesting to see where the community goes. But for now, the site is far too new to know whether it will survive. That being said, my highly controversial bet in favor of Star Wars over Star Trek is likely to encourage a few adamant Kirk fans; nevertheless, I stand firm in my belief that the force, as always, will prevail.

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