Foretal lets you bet on the future
3rd of October 2007 by conor
Foretal, a new site based in Malta using IP developed in Ireland has just launched. It is built around users making predictions and voting on the predictions of others. The cunning twist is that you can do either part for free or for money.
Betting sites like PaddyPower are very popular in Ireland but they currently don't provide a way for you to propose things to bet on. Foretal allows you to do it on anything. Many of the predictions on the site are currently either politics or sport but I expect the range to increase as people realise that the possibilities are unlimited.
The way it works is quite simple. Each time you vote on a prediction for free, you get a credit. Make five credits and you can post your own prediction for free. If you prefer, you can pay €5 to make a prediction and others can vote yes/no for money too. Once the closing date has passed, some of the money that has been bet is dispersed to those who voted correctly and to the predictor.
The site itself looks beautiful and the user interface is very easy to understand but painfully slow. I honestly love this site since I was looking to bet on the outcome of some reality TV show recently but couldn't find it on PaddyPower. Some of the things I can imagine people predicting and voting on are:
- Environmental disasters
- Junta evictions
- Deaths and marriages of famous people
- Court case outcomes
- Election outcomes in other countries
Win/Lose is very simply done on the basis of coverage by three web-sites. The first two are from a drop down list of news organisations like the BBC and you can decide the third one.
The mix of free/pay is a very smart move with the free side reminding me a little of Jyte. The requirement to vote before you can predict for free will drive up usage. The two things I'd like to see added are widgets so I can show what I'm predicting/voting on my blog/MySpace and RSS feeds for new predictions from each of the categories.
You may be wondering about the Malta angle. According to Julian Ellison it is because Malta has the best on-line gaming regulatory framework. As with all of these sites, people in the USA cannot legally use it.
I've made my first prediction. See if you can figure out which one it is.
Comment posted by Julian Ellison
at 10/3/2007 11:44:34 AM
Thanks Conor sorry to hear that you founds things slow, we'll look into that, but nonetheless thanks for your very kind remarks.
Incidently, if you look at the public profile of your prediction, you can find two links. One which gives you an RSS feed, and the other as a normal link. They are:
For RSS:
http://www.foretal.com:80/foretal/action/sitePredictionAction?mtc=predictionRSSInfo&prediction_id=73
For Blog link:
http://www.foretal.com:80/foretal/action/sitePredictionAction?mtc=predictionBlogInfo&prediction_id=73