• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 14, 2008

Bragster, a sort of MySpace meets Jackass, has received $3.5 million in first-round venture funding led by Intel Capital, the chip maker's investment arm.

The site lets users make cashless bets with friends about whether they can do kooky things like drink 15 shots of tequila in less than a minute. Around this premise, Bragster offers social networking features including video-sharing (for providing proof of accomplished feats), profile pages, and messaging.

The year-old, London-based venture says it's drawing 800,000 mostly U.S.-based monthly users, although comScore estimates traffic at 226,000 monthly visitors as of January. Bragster co-founder Wim Vernaeve said the company plans to make money in large part through "sponsored brags" in which brands pay to be part of dares or bets. In one test promotion, for instance, Bragster worked with Ikea in daring some of its users to spend 24 hours in one of the furniture company's stores.

"We want to try to work closely together with specific brands to create big sponsored brags," Vernaeve said. But how close brands want to get to videos of people getting drunk fast or eating three cans of baked beans in three minutes is a big question. Marketers have already proven to be skittish about advertising alongside user-generated clips on mainstream video sites like YouTube and MySpaceTV.

So why would any advertiser want to associate itself with Bragster's brand of mischief? Vernaeve said marketers would have control over the types of dares they're involved with to ensure content isn't too risqué or otherwise inappropriate. So things like the Ikea challenge or an automaker daring users to see how many people can fit inside a certain model.

Of course, the less outrageous the bets become, the less appealing they'll be to the site's target young male audience. Maybe the big brains at investor Intel can help figure out that conundrum.

Intel Capital was joined in the Bragster financing by angel investor David Frankel, who has previously backed companies including GetMeIn and SiteAdvisor, sold to Ticketmaster and McAfee, respectively.