Twitter originally started as a side project of podcasting company Odeo. Post-It Notes were accidently invented while the inventor was playing around with a new glue. Sometimes, businesses end up with a product that is much more interesting than what the company originally set out to create. FanDuel was created as an application of the HubDub engine, and it appears that the founders have decided that the road to the promised land is with FanDuel and not HubDub. HubDub announced that the site will cease to exist as it founders have decided to focus on FanDuel, which specializes in daily fantasy sports games.

This comes on the heals of FanDuel announcing a partnership with Philly.com to host a branded version of HubDub’s game on its site. This is a very big move for Philly.com since it provides it an opportunity to create new revenue from a market that it previously could not address. If it is popular, it wins. If it fails, it does not lose anything since FanDuel is doing all the heavy lifting and Philly.com just shares in the profit.

Something to be noted here, is that Philadelphia is a very enthuastic sports market, which makes for an ideal partner for FanDuel. It is a great market to succeed, and possibly enable FanDuel to create similar relationships with other local newspaper sites. If FanDuel had partnered with a paper in a city like Miami, Denver, or Oakland, it may take longer for the partnership to be successful, perhaps too long. If this is going to succeed, Philadelphia is a great market for it and will provide a great benchmark for other cities.

The ability to shift focus is a sign of good leadership. In the examples mentioned above, the companies involved could have plowed ahead and made the original businesses or ideas work; however, they saw opportunity to make an even better idea work. Think about the cliche, “When life give you lemons, you make lemonade.” In this case, life gave them lemonade, so they took it.

Of course, this could just be a well-played PR move, as the leading question on HubDub.com is asking, “Is the Hubdub Closing news a hoax? (to force people to spend their Hard earned Hubdub$$?).” If it is, then HubDub has succeeded in getting attention to its site, as a number of technology and sports blogs have picked up on this latest bit of news. (Just search “FanDuel” on google news if you don’t believe me).

Either way, it is hard to disagree with the move that HubDub has taken. Congratulations to the HubDub/FanDuel team on making a very hard and risky decision.

The easiest way to get people to do something new is to make it free, offer prizes, and make it similar to things that they are used to doing. FanDuel’s Tweetball fantasy football is a simple game that easily meets all of these criteria, while creating a simple and elegant fantasy football game that is played exclusively on Twitter.

FanDuel is hosting this game to drive traffic towards its main suite of pay-to-play fantasy sports games that you can find on its site (See: FanDuel Launches Fast Head-To-Head Fantasy. Aside from finding a simple, low-cost way to market itself, Tweetball may ultimately be a product that FanDuel can build a business around. It is easy and fun to play, does not require fantasy players to change their behavior (as long they tweet), and is easily accessibly by anyone. Plus, add in the potential for the game grow via a viral expansion loop, and FanDuel ultimately may have a success on its hands.

To play Fanduel’s weekly fantasy football twitter game, a player tweets a quarterback, running back, and wide receiver and includes the “#fanduel” tag and a link to the game (as pictured above–pretty simple, eh?). The team with the most points each week wins a Fathead of its choice.

Tweet and win!

From the founders of Hubdub, comes a new fantasy sports site FanDuel, which is geared around daily head-to-head fantasy games. Hubdub is an interactive site where users predict the news, so fantasy sports is a good tangent for the company.

To play FanDuel, fantasy players select the players that they think will score the most fantasy points for that day. At this time, only fantasy football and fantasy baseball are supported, but expect that to change if FanDuel grows. Currently, players can play for free, but the game’s big allure is the ability to play for cash prizes, with players able to enter a cash league for as little $5. For each $5 entry fee, a player can win a $9 prize. He who scores the most points wins the game and gets paid instantly. If you sign-up and add funds right now, FanDuel will also give you an additional $10 bonus.

Short-term fantasy leagues are definitely a growing market, as evidenced by the recent launches of SnapDraft and Instant Arena. FanDuel is keeping their game simple by focusing on head-to-head match-ups, and making game play very straightforward.

Congratulations to Hubdub with the launch of FanDuel, and good luck with the launch.

Additional Coverage:

• News Betting Site Hubdub Launches U.S. Fantasy Sports Games (PaidContent)
• Brand New Fantasy Sports Game – brought to you by the Hubdub Team! (Hubdub)