Trivia: The New Online Gamble?
from gaming industry site OnlineGambling.eu…
While online gambling tends to juggle some compromise between games of
pure chance and games of…slightly less pure chance, UK-based Amuso is
hoping to score big with a completely different angle.
$1.5 million of venture capital has so far been raised to expand Amuso’s
online presence through expansion and strategy in the UK and US. The
company’s flagship Triva Star platform has inspired commercial
partnerships with the likes of MySpace and MTV (as well as celebrated
landfill contributors AOL), after doubling its growth each month since
launching in September of 2007.
Trivia Star, a multiplayer, micropayment-based Flash game, now commands a
lion’s share of the estimated $3 billion global market. Over 200,000
registered users already compete in the live, social gameplay that
resembles a more directed version of online bingo’s chat games — and
anyone paying attention to online bingo’s growth and appeal can see why
major concerns are taking note.
Barak Rabinowitz, CEO and founder of Amuso: “Cash trivia a new gaming
vertical likened to the early days of online bingo or poker. Amuso’s
Trivia Star enables social networks, publishers, even micro-bloggers an
attractive new way to monetise their online and mobile audiences, having
previously relied heavily on online advertising.”
With the three biggest sectors of entertainment being TV quiz shows,
online gambling, and casual gaming, it is easy to see why so many industry
eyebrows are simultaneously rising. Given the vast segment of the online
community spending time on social networking and communications, Amuso’s
trivia network could very well be poised to become a new paradigm.
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Cash for Questions:
from TechCrunch Europe…
Online cash trivia gamester Amuso has closed its latest round of funding with a $1.5 million investment from Mangrove Capital Partners, the principal investor at its launch in 2007, alongside a series of angel investors. It will use the cash to expand in the UK and US. It’s also hired Ned Walley and Rabin Yaghoubi, both former Directors of Strategic Partnerships at Google. Bill Houghton, former Director of Products at AOL Entertainment, is Amuso’s new Head of Products. Amuso’s development lab is in Barcelona.
Cash trivia games are worth more than $3 billion globally, and Amuso’s speciality is launching them on social networks via flash widgets. On TriviaStar competitors can play the free version or make small cash deposits, payable via SMA or PayPal, from which partners take a transactional commission. The remainder is used to fund cash prizes for winners. Amuso says conversion rates from play for free to play for cash represent one in ten for an average $1.50 entry fee.
Amuso’s multiplayer, micropayment-based trivia game Trivia Star launched in June 2009 and has commercial partnerships with AOL, Bebo, MySpace, MTV and Associated Newspapers in Europe and Heavy and Rap Basement in the US. It now has 200,000 registered users, representing a 100% compound monthly growth rate since launch.
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