the bragster blog - Home

Happy April Fools!

2008-04-01T16:57:00Z

Been seeing things today? Logged onto bragster and saw God speaking to you via the little blue pop ups? Thought you had won 20000000000000000 bragbucks? Were convinced by the message welcoming you to the Secret Order as the Chosen One?

Checked, rubbed your eyes and then checked again to see whether you were going mad? Yeh we bet you did! Some of you really fell for it and others thought bragster had been hacked into. Fear not, we well and truly pranked you :-) Bets were popping up, messages were hitting our inbox every few seconds, and even my mum called to check what the Secret Order was about?!

I think cyan_93 really does deserve a bragster t-shirt for trying to spend her new bragbucks because the little blue pop-up told her that she had won "30000 bragbucks and that she had to spend them in 3 hours". Sorry! MikeRowave was really kind and contacted us immediately out of concern - he either thought bragster had been hacked or we'd been taken over by a cult - not sure which one! BennnnBennnnn was really excited about speaking to "God" and then pondered: "Maybe we are being fooled that god is speaking to us..." . Some of the comments on MikeRowave's ...bet cracked us up

So thanks for giving us a good laugh at the bragster garage! April Fool's has been awesome and even Wim and Bertrand haven't escaped the pranks! Check it out! the evidence should be up shortly.

Happy April Fools!

Bragster Love!

What happens when someone declines a dare?

2008-03-31T18:16:00Z

Hello Everyone! In the last 17 seconds something has changed, and in our opinion, it’s changed for the better. In the past, there was some confusion about how dares worked when someone declined them, didn’t upload evidence or didn’t accept, so we’ve revamped the process so it’s more clear.

This is how it works: if someone does not accept a dare, declines a dare or fails to upload evidence than the people who chose ‘They Won’t Do It’ will win the bet.

And from the other direction: if you choose ‘They Won’t Do It’ and the daree doesn’t accept the dare, declines the dare or doesn’t upload evidence than you will win the bet.

Everyone got it? If you’ve got a question about this works, leave a comment or let me know, and I’ll be happy to explain further.

Watch Out For That Red Herring, Or You Might Get Plugg.eud

2008-03-31T09:55:00Z

Sorry we've been so quiet for the last couple of weeks, but it's cause we've been busy with a capital B. We were selected to present at Plugg.eu in Belgium, so we sent our fearless leaders, Wim and Bertrand, to bring a little of the Bragster-tude to Belgium. Oh, and they brought it. Here's the vid (thanks Robin!):

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Despite throwing pie EVERYWHERE, they got to the final three, and we eventually came in second! We don't normally support being second best, but the winner, Viewdle, is ex-KGB technology at it's finest. And, if that wasn't cool enough for you, we've also been selected as a finalist in the Red Herring 100.
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What does that mean? Don't know, but it makes us sound really cool and important. Just kidding, I do know what it means. It means that out of all of the tech start-ups in all of the vast lands of Europe, The Middle East and Africa, we're in the top 200. We'll let you know if we've made it to the top 100 once it's announced. And if you want to keep up with us all day, everyday, then follow us on Twitter.

Bragster Party - Victory is Sweet!

2008-03-16T18:34:00Z

The first Bragster party is now just a distant memory, but trust us when we say no one who attended will forget! Obviously we had to dare everyone to show up in their undies…

Thanks to all of you who helped organizing!!

Back from Texas

2008-03-14T15:15:00Z

Finally some news from the bragster team after our week in Austin! Sorry for the radio silence while we were there; we tried to keep you updated via our Twitter account as that was more convenient given the bad internet connection out there. I’d like to think we’ve been too busy to write blog posts because we were attending panel after panel, but that was only during daytime. So what’s the excuse for evenings or early jetlag mornings? Well… I’ll let you take a guess on that one ;)

It’s been really great and the sessions were of a very high quality. There was something in it for everyone and while I’ve attended sessions about the art of self-branding, start-up management 2.0, how to keep teams who love their jobs motivated, the rest of the team attended sessions about design, marketing, community management, how to measure success, and many, many other topics. There was also a keynote from Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook. The interview didn’t really teach us anything new apart from the fact they just launched in French, but it was still impressive to see how a 24 year old has accomplished such great things.

The weather has been great and it’s tough being back in rainy London… We’ll also miss our steaks and the local Shiner beer at some of the many parties we attended, such as Google, Gawker media, 16bits, the Great British Booze up and many others. Bertrand and myself have also been to a shooting range on Saturday to get the true Texas experience. Scary!

Have a look at Adam’s pictures on Flickr here.

Welcome Chris!

2008-03-06T15:58:00Z

Today we’re welcoming Chris as a new senior developer who’s gonna help out Peter and his team to get the site run even smoother than it already does. Chris is already a Ruby genius so will hit the ground running and and get you some cool new functionalities. He comes at a great time just after our round of funding and continued focus on the new dares.

Before I close off here, wanted to show you a recent video on the site that made my day yesterday. Gandy snorts one meter of chilli…

VICTORY IS SWEET indeed

And ... we're off to Texas!

2008-03-06T14:47:00Z

The Bragster team is going to Texas on Friday to attend the SXSW conference in Austin. We’re very excited about learning some new stuff and also showcasing some of the things that we’ve been working on. Obviously we’re also there to have some fun after we worked pretty damn hard for the past year and a half. As these things go, it all started way back with a few too many drinks and me promising the team a trip to Las Vegas if and when we secured our next round of funding. People tend to remember such promises but fortunately they preferred to get something useful out of such a trip and so we decided to go to SXSW instead.

I personally look forward to some of the keynotes including one from Mark Zuckerberg and … sunshine! You will be able to follow updates on all the stuff we’re up to over there (and believe me when I say that we have BIG plans!) either here on our blog or why not follow us via our new Twitter identity

Glorious prizes...victory is sweet!

2008-03-05T11:26:00Z

Bragster is all about victorious goodness and we LOVE rewarding our bragsters. Ashley02 won a blinding $200 for winning 18,199 bragbucks in February and therefore, landing the Top Bragster prize in February! Remember if you get the most bragbucks this month, you could be our next Top Bragster. So start winning.

We also had some hilarious and astounding brags in February and just made our job of picking the Wildest Dare even harder...so we put it to a poll. Help us to choose the winner and check out the wildly entertaining things these legendary bragsters got up to in February. The winner stands to win $200 or £100 cash...so place your votes.

Start bragging because next month it could be you rolling in cash. Victory is Sweet!

Something about this brag is unsettling... Ah, because it's unsettled, so now what?

2008-02-29T18:32:00Z

Bragster is dependent on you, our illustrious members, to create great bets, dares and polls. We also rely on you to settle them, but sometimes you let us down… We know you don’t mean to, and sometimes you just forget, or you don’t know what happened. We do the best we can to step in settle some of the obvious brags i.e. sports, news, celebrity type things, but when it comes to the dares, we can’t really settle them for you.

There are two deputies on the site, moi and MikeRowave. Between us, I’d say we do a damn fine job of making sure that the aforementioned, obvious brags get settled. As deputies, we have the power to step in after the bet/dare has been pending settlement for 15 days and choose the winning outcome.

We only do this when the outcome is obvious, so please understand there’s not a lot we can do about messages like the following:

“I don’t why this gurl settled her bet saying that Kanye West is better than 50 Cent. Everyone knows that 50 Cent invented da game, and Kanye West is a wannabe playa with no skillz.”

But, Brittney, you say, it IS obvious that 50 Cent is far superior to that game-hating Kanye West and his NuRave, hipster shades. Sadly, I cannot make such determinations for the general public, because, as a deputy, I cannot settle opinion based brags or those which are based on facts to which I don’t have access. While I value your thoughts on the current state of Hip-Hop/Gangsta Rap, I cannot take it as fact.

If you’ve got a question or some f-f-feedback, then, in the words of Mr. Ryan Adams, “When you get the time, sit down and write me a letter. When you’re feeling better, drop me a line.”

Later skaterz.

Help! I accidentally invested all of my BragBucks in the Sub-Prime Market, and now I'm broke!

2008-02-27T15:22:00Z

Luckily you’ve got me to tell you all of the nifty ways to get some more BragBucks without having to whore yourself out to some boring Coke vs. Pepsi brag. Without further ado, I present to you, a list:

Invite your friends who haven’t joined Bragster yet. For everyone of them who signs up, you’ll get 1,000 BragBucks. Just make sure they follow the link in the invite email you send them.
Create a bet with more than 25 participants, and you’ll get a popular bet bonus of 1,000 BragBucks!
Make a fire altar to the Bragster gods, and do an interpretive dance to ‘Gimme More’ by Britney Spears around the fire. If you do this, please send us the video, and I will personally gift you an undisclosed number of BragBucks¹.

I hope this helps everyone out, and we do know how absolutely irritating it is when you’re trying to join some cool brags only to discover that joining that Boys vs. Girls bet for 5,000 BragBucks has really wiped you out. We’ll be introducing new ways to get BragBucks in the future, and we’ll keep you updated here on the blog.

¹ I am completely serious; do this and you will be handsomely rewarded by yours truly.

Some extreme news!

2008-02-25T16:30:00Z

The big news just keeps rolling in, here at Bragster. Victory really is sweet! What's the exciting news? We are teaming up with Extreme (Yes the Extreme from The Extreme Sports Channel fame) and launching exbrag.com . Now there is a place for all you hardcore bragsters to show off your skills and be even more daring.

Anyway, enough words...check out the vid on exbrag.com ! (Bertrand gets very excited about this video and he has watched it for days!)

Funding Announcement

2008-02-14T02:07:00Z

Some pretty big news today as we announced our most recent round of Venture Capital funding led by Intel Capital

The whole Bragster team has been working hard for the past year and this investment round means we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It gives us extra resources to further develop the site and implement some of those features you have all been asking for.

You can read more details in our official press release or have a look at what Mike Butcher wrote on TechCrunch UK and TechCrunch

The Bragster Blog!

2008-02-13T20:27:00Z

Hey everyone,

Unlike many companies who start their blog way before their site is up, we finally got ours after one year of existence. Obviously you all know that the only reason is that we’ve been so busy developing the best possible platform for all you bragsters out there!

Going forward this will be the place where we will share our ideas, thoughts and more importantly look for your feedback on how we can continue to improve our site. The past year has been AMAZING and we still cannot believe the crazy things people do on bragster.com and that after only one year, about a million people visit our site each month.

I want to take the opportunity to say a special thank you for those bragsters that have been with us since the beginning and are the foundation of our vibrant community. We have some pretty big announcements to make in the short future, so stay tuned!

Wim