New information technologies for the friends of prediction markets?
Chris F. Masse December 17th, 2007
My opinions on three recent IT announcements:
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#1. GOOGLE KNOLS - Bullshit.
- There is no tapping into the wisdom of crowds —contrary to Wikipedia.
- Why would Robin Hanson (for instance) write on prediction markets for a Google-owned webpage when he can write for his own website or group blog (which, both, are ranked well by Google Search)?
#2. FRIENDS’ SHARED ITEMS WITHIN GOOGLE READER - Interesting.
- There is tapping into the wisdom of crowds —provided that your friends share your interest in prediction markets (which is my case).
- The goal here is to use your friends to discover fresh items about prediction markets that you would have missed otherwise.
- Alas, my friends are more interested in politics and technology —the topic of prediction markets is a minor in most people’s life.
- The Google mechanism is clever but not flexible enough. Basically, you take it or leave it. More flexibility is needed.
#3. YAHOO! SHORTCUTS PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS - Highly significant.
- Blogging software packages (like WordPress and MovableType) are the best web publishing tools, nowadays. And more and more people follow blogs. Thus, there is a need for tools linking more intrinsically these blogs and the other web resources (search engines, news websites, web encyclopedias, university websites, vendor websites, prediction markets, etc.).
- I will install the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin (along with a bunch of others) this afternoon.
- Google should output such a WordPress plugin, too —if you want my opinion.
- I expect BetFair-TradeFair and TradeSpots-InTrade to develop their own (WordPress and MovableType) plugins in the future.
- Midas Oracle might take the initiative, one day, to head the development of an open-source prediction market plugin for WordPress. Any PHP developers out there?
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- Information Technology , Midas Oracle Administration , The Internet
- Comments(4)
Re: Knols - I believe this is a decent decision. Wikipedia built a big knowledge base and people were willing to contribute partially because it brought traffic and PageRank to the pages that were cited in Wikipedia posts. Now that Wikipedia is the 800lb. gorilla and they get additions just for fun, they added nofollow to all links which pissed off many of their contributors. Enter knols. If managed properly it could supersede Wikipedia (and then adsense ads on the side increase google profit enormously).
Re: wordpress prediction market plugin - I don’t see it happening. Wordpress is a blogging tool that can be shoehorned to do other things. Taking it to the level of making it a platform for a predictive market seems like the old problem of “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Re: Knols will never “supersede Wikipedia” since it will not tap into collective intelligence.
Re: prediction market plugin for wordpress - I meant a plugin that will make it easier to add prediction market charts, and, more generally, interact with the prediction markets from the blogs. I didn’t mean a platform to build prediction markets and compete with InTrade or BetFair. I meant a way to make the life of bloggers easier when dealing with the current prediction markets. I have many ideas.
Ah - I see now about wordpress, that does make sense. I have a hard time imagining features for it, but I’ll believe you’ve got some good ones!
Indeed. When a blogger like me wants to insert many charts from many exchanges, it’s a pain in the posterior. A plugin can help, if designed intelligently, and if the exchanges collaborate —it’s in their interest.