The new Hollywood Stock Exchange website (recently redesigned) sucks as much as an indigestible fruit cake.

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HSX-sucks.com &#8212- I predict that somebody will soon register this domain name.

Many HSX event derivative traders have complained to me privately about the website redesign: they hate it more than they hate the recent financial bailout. One HSX trader went off on the Prediction Markets group discussion area at LinkedIn. Today, another HSX trader is writing a long prosecution of the HSX website redesign. Read it in all, and spot the many comments at the bottom, from fellow HSX traders.

The root of the problem is Alex Costakis &#8212-the director of HSX. My assessment of him is that he doesn&#8217-t get the Web. He is as clueless as a maggot trying to play Jazz. He is not an open person, and the Web is all about openness. This guy is a drag on HSX. I predict he will lead to HSX&#8217-s death.

The only 2 persons that could lead to a revival of HSX are Max Keiser or Nigel Eccles. Let&#8217-s hope that Cantor Fitzgerald will call them for help.

UPDATE: See the comments.

14 thoughts on “The new Hollywood Stock Exchange website (recently redesigned) sucks as much as an indigestible fruit cake.

  1. Jed Christiansen said:

    All of Facebook’s current users hated it when Facebook introduced the “News Feed”.  But it is arguably the single most important feature that led to its growth.

    If you only think about current users, you’ll always be limited.  Check out this link for one example:

    http://arvindn.livejournal.com/96382.html

    I’m not saying that I love everything about the new HSX design.  But people always complain when their favorite site changes; you have to be patient and let people get used to it before you can really evaluate it.

  2. Chris F. Masse said:

    You are making a good point.

    However, I read with great care what the HSX trader, said and I went myself on the HSX website. My informed opinion is negative.

  3. WhiskeyKilo said:

    Change is one thing, breaking the whole site and acting like its nothing happened is another. The whole concept of trading movie stocks, movie bonds and options have taken a backseat to making sure you can blog, add friends, and “Schmooze”.

    The old portfolio page was color coded and extremely easy to understand, you instantly knew if you were making H$ or losing your shirt. Now the current portfolio page is a small box, one colour, light grey on a white backround and the type is half the size of the font here, also you can only see 12 stocks at any given moment. Whoever OK’d this part of the site has to have never traded any shares online before.

    From what I can gather, there was a beta version of this 3rd generation of the game, but no one paid any attention to the any of the feedback, two days after this new rollout, HSX.com started calling this new version a beta game, and what HSX staff there is say that portfolios are now their priority. However the only things that really work right now are the blogs, which pay H$10,000 a posting, adding friends pays traders H$1000, Online Polls, and Schmoozing. which paid initially H$1000, but now pays H$100 per reply. The only reason I see for paying traders to blog is to bring more eyeballs to the garish 728×90 and 300×225 ads on each page to pump the number of advertising views on HSX. But if this is part of the grand scheme here, I can’t see Gold coin or Forex advertisers closing sales from a bunch of 13 year olds because all the veteran traders have left in disgust.

    I welcome Jed to read the HSX Support page: http://www.hsx.com/cms/forums/support and look around, I shudder to think this all is going to be a B-School case study on how to kill a successful site in under a week.

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  8. Jed Christiansen said:

    All of Facebook’s current users hated it when Facebook introduced the “News Feed”.  But it is arguably the single most important feature that led to its growth.

    If you only think about current users, you’ll always be limited.  Check out this link for one example:

    http://arvindn.livejournal.com/96382.html

    I’m not saying that I love everything about the new HSX design.  But people always complain when their favorite site changes; you have to be patient and let people get used to it before you can really evaluate it.

  9. Chris F. Masse said:

    You are making a good point.

    However, I read with great care what the HSX trader, said and I went myself on the HSX website. My informed opinion is negative.

  10. WhiskeyKilo said:

    Change is one thing, breaking the whole site and acting like its nothing happened is another. The whole concept of trading movie stocks, movie bonds and options have taken a backseat to making sure you can blog, add friends, and “Schmooze”.

    The old portfolio page was color coded and extremely easy to understand, you instantly knew if you were making H$ or losing your shirt. Now the current portfolio page is a small box, one colour, light grey on a white backround and the type is half the size of the font here, also you can only see 12 stocks at any given moment. Whoever OK’d this part of the site has to have never traded any shares online before.

    From what I can gather, there was a beta version of this 3rd generation of the game, but no one paid any attention to the any of the feedback, two days after this new rollout, HSX.com started calling this new version a beta game, and what HSX staff there is say that portfolios are now their priority. However the only things that really work right now are the blogs, which pay H$10,000 a posting, adding friends pays traders H$1000, Online Polls, and Schmoozing. which paid initially H$1000, but now pays H$100 per reply. The only reason I see for paying traders to blog is to bring more eyeballs to the garish 728×90 and 300×225 ads on each page to pump the number of advertising views on HSX. But if this is part of the grand scheme here, I can’t see Gold coin or Forex advertisers closing sales from a bunch of 13 year olds because all the veteran traders have left in disgust.

    I welcome Jed to read the HSX Support page: http://www.hsx.com/cms/forums/support and look around, I shudder to think this all is going to be a B-School case study on how to kill a successful site in under a week.

  11. How to break a successful prediction exchange in less than one week | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] F. Masse October 27th, 2008 Whiskey Kilo (a Hollywood Stock Exchange […]

  12. The Hollywood Stock Exchange traders are revolting against the new "social networking" functionalities brought in there by some snake-oil "social media" consultant. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] #1 – […]

  13. Meet Andrew Wing, the recently appointed CEO of Cantor Entertainment, who (along with Alex Costakis) has lead to the complete and definitive destruction of the Hollywood Stock Exchange. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] #1 – #2 – […]

  14. At inception, I created an "Internet usability" category, and, since, I have published many Jakob Nielsen stories. Many wondered why I would bother. Now, the Midas Oracle readers can understand why. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] #1 – #2 – #3 – […]

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