Archive for the tag 'journalists'
InTrade has surpassed BetFair and TradeSports (and the Iowa Electronic Markets, too).
Chris F. Masse September 30th, 2008
InTrade’s PageRank is now 7 / 10 —while all the other major prediction market firms are at 6 / 10.
- It shows that the prediction market approach is paying off. Do provide journalist-friendly objective probabilistic predictions (expressed in percentages –not those fucking decimal odds), and the media will link to you, thanks to all the free-market economists who love your model and act as unpaid publicists for you. Make sure your website can resist under heavy traffic loads on Election Day, and during the occasional days where important news break. Then, milk out all this free publicity. Run registration ads allover your exchange website to attract new traders. Make money. Invest in IT —but don’t let the IT maniacs complicate your prediction exchange too much (as BetFair did).
- Long-term, the InTrade model (based on the prediction market approach) should be more profitable, in theory. Because of legal impediment, InTrade is not as profitable as it should be, alas.
Why InTrade CEO John Delaney, TradeSports acting CEO John Delaney, BetFair CEO David Yu, HubDub CEO Nigel Eccles and NewsFutures CEO Emile Servan-Schreiber should supplicate me to develop my prediction market journalism project
Chris F. Masse August 7th, 2008
- 200 web visitors (coming from Google) reached my John Edwards post, published yesterday afternoon (ET).
- 10% of them followed my links to the 2 HubDub prediction markets on John Edwards.
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Remember that those web stats count only the web visitors, not the feed subscribers —who are more numerous, and whom I focus more on.
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TAKEAWAY: A popular PMJ website, which would associate fresh news and betting recommendations, would send many people to the prediction markets.
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The mainstream media and the classic bloggers will never deal with real-money prediction markets the way they should be dealt with —for multiple reasons (moral, ethical, legal, etc.). And for other reasons, they will never link to the play-money prediction markets.
Look Justin Wolfers at the Wall Street Journal: He is the most excited about prediction markets. Yet, he does not link to InTrade directly. He does not link to the InTrade real-money prediction markets. Hence, his blah blah blah does not translate into more revenues for InTrade.
What it takes is a brand-new media organization, entirely devoted to prediction markets, and run by die-hard prediction market people.
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Please, guys, help me.
- cfm |-at-| midasoracle |.|-com-|
- chrisfmasse |-at-| gmail |.|-com-|
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WORLD-WIDE WEB EXCLUSIVE (PLEASE, DO CREDIT “MIDAS ORACLE” FOR THE SCOOP): Here’s what Nigel Eccles drinks when he works on the HubDub mission statement.
Chris F. Masse July 26th, 2008
What's on Nigel Eccles' desk at HubDub.
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Quoting HubDub forecasts in news stories about future events will be as common as quoting stock prices in financial stories is today or (in the UK) quoting betting odds for political elections.
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In my view, the only way our good friend Nigel Eccles would succeed would be to get HubDub on television —like our good friend Max Keiser did with the Hollywood Stock Exchange in the end of the 90s.
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Nigel Eccles’ flawed “vision” about HubDub shows that he hasn’t any.
Chris F. Masse July 24th, 2008
[IMPORTANT NOTE: This present post is critical of one point expressed by Nigel Eccles, but, overall, I like this Scottish guy, and I enjoy HubDub's prediction markets a lot.]
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Quoting HubDub forecasts in news stories about future events will be as common as quoting stock prices in financial stories is today or (in the UK) quoting betting odds for political elections.
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Nigel,
my good friend,
Quit drinking the Scotch whisky and listen up 2 minutes.
I appreciate the formidable effort you made to start up HubDub and I am delightful its prediction markets are now well traded. In that perspective, HubDub is already a success. And I agree that many HubDub prediction market prices are meaningful.
However, I strongly disagree with the idea that, at one point in the future, the free world’s journalists and bloggers will rush to quote HubDub’s market-generated probabilities. Here’s why.
See, my good Scottish friend, you’re not the first fellow to tackle this problem. A guy named Emile Servan-Schreiber, with another fellow named Maurice Balick, created NewsFutures (a play-money prediction exchange quite similar to HubDub, except that HubDub uses MSR whereas NewsFutures uses CDA) in the year 2000 —at the time most contemporary prediction market people were still drinking their mother’s milk.
For the Midas Oracle readers who are just surfacing from an Afghan cave, Emile Servan-Schreiber is:
- a veteran of the prediction market industry;
- a well educated (PhD) and smart man;
- a gifted exchange executive, with a very good understanding of Internet usability;
- a successful entrepreneur (NewsFutures has been profitable for years);
- the only international prediction market expert (NewsFutures has clients in North-America, Europe, and Asia);
- the author of 2 academic papers on prediction markets (one of them established the predictive power of the play-money prediction markets);
- one of the most often interviewed prediction market people;
- well connected in the Academia (2 prediction market luminaries are on the NewsFutures scientific advisory board);
- the winner of a bet he made against Justin Wolfers;
- etc.
In other words, Emile Servan-Schreiber is far from being a moron.
Still, in 8 years of existence, NewsFutures’s prediction market prices have NEVER been quoted (over than occasionally) in the Mediasphere or the Blogosphere.
What makes you think that a cocky Scottish guy will be able to achieve what a smart Frenchman has miserably failed to achieve?
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The answer to Nigel Eccles’ mission statement resides in a collective effort from all prediction market people and organizations to favor the development of prediction market journalism.
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VIDEO: Max Keiser’s attempt at predicting the future —subjectively
Chris F. Masse June 19th, 2008
Overall, the TV show is based on a good concept (trying to predict future headlines), and I’m sure it will be a success in the end.
However, one big mistake Max is doing is to have female journalists. Sorry to say that, but if you are in the business of selling subjective predictions, you need to have credible predictors, with loud voice, charisma, and definitive attitude. Most women in journalism don’t display those qualities.
Max, fire the journalists and put real pundits on your TV show.
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Deep Throat on the journalists’ fatigue for reporting on prediction markets
Deep Throat April 26th, 2008
When we recently talked to a MSM reporter for a major article, he/she specifically said he/she didn’t want to write about public prediction exchanges because “there is nothing new there,” and was even hesitant to write about the activities of certain private, high-tech companies because they already have a reputation for “trying anything.” If that attitude is prevalent among other journalists, there may already be a fatigue setting in which is why you saw very little interest in the latest WSJ article on political prediction markets. Thinking about the readership of the major business press, through several feature articles there is already an awareness about the basics. There is limited return in writing yet another: “people are trading on everything from housing futures to political candidates, isn’t that amazing?”
There also seems to be very little innovation coming from the major public exchanges. When’s the last time any of the major prediction exchanges did anything truly noteworthy with their platform that was worth writing about? [...]
The novelty of it all is wearing off, the “wisdom of crowds” stories have been done, and the public exchanges are going to need to come up with Act II, either through innovation, new content strategies, or partnerships.
73% of journalists [*] sometimes or always use blogs in their research.
Chris F. Masse March 28th, 2008
[*] = newspaper, magazine, TV, radio, and web journalists
Via Henry Blodget (who is hilarious, as always)
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Implications for the field of prediction markets (InTrade-TradeFair, BetFair-TradeFair, Betdaq, HSX, NewsFutures, Inkling Markets, etc.):
- The P.R. arm of the prediction market firms should also reach the bloggers —not just the journalists.
- Prediction market firms should monitor the Blogosphere for rumors, and deal with them in a subtitle way.
- A long (“too long”, some will say), balanced, detailed blog post about your product is more useful to reach out than a media kit.
- Our industry needs a blog network of reference, all focused on prediction markets.
Care to revise your statement, sir?
Chris F. Masse January 9th, 2008
“In a few years, we may regard the second half of the 20th century as the aberration in which the press used polls rather than markets to track political races,” Justin Wolfers, a business professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, wrote in an e-mail message. “And in the 21st century, we may return to the habits of the early 20th century, reporting on political races through the lens of prediction markets rather than polls.”
Previously: Prediction markets are forecasting tools of convenience that feed on advanced indicators.
