The website blufr.com combines trivia with entertainment.Is the smog from volcanoes really called vog? Was cocaine used as a food additive in the 1800s?
And was Jim Henson’s Sesame Street inspired by the master puppeteer’s own New York street?
At the Blufr website, visitors are confronted by the choice of whether these questions are ‘bluffs’ or truth.
For every correct answer given, points are tallied – a la a video game – and ‘players’ can even enter their own retro arcade-style three-initial tag for a high score.
The website keeps a percentage tally of how many people were bluffed – or bluf’d as the website spells it – by each statement, and even ranks the greatest bluffs.
Web surfers can email the bluffs to friends and family, and even create a personal Bluf-o-Gram – a bluff with a true or false statement about its author.
But there’s more to Blufr.com than meets the eye.
Behind this incredibly addictive website, which hooks surfers in with its wave of useless information, the Blufr website is a creative marketing tool for long-time encyclopedia site, Answers.com.
Upon receiving a ‘You’re right’ or ‘You’ve been bluf’d’ prompt, web surfers also receive a description of the facts behind each bluff, with key words linked directly to their Answers.com description for more elaborate study.
But that’s not to say that Blufr.com lacks merit for merely being a facade to Answers.com.
In fact, it’s entirely possible to use the site without any in-your-face promotion of its parent site.
Visitors to the site would not be aware of the Answers.com link without prior knowledge, or without reading the ‘About’ section of the website.
So did Coca-Cola really invent the current image of Santa Claus we’ve come to love?
Is there no Nobel Prize for Mathematics because Alfred Noble’s wife had an affair with a mathematician?
The answers are out there – log on to blufr.com and discover for yourself.
