3 reasons why bloggers should boycott BetFair Predicts

I am writing this post with the hope that the good BetFair people in HammerSmith stumble on it, and make the necessary changes.

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I do recommend that my fellow bloggers boycott BetFair Predicts for these 3 important reasons:

1. The background of the BetFair Predicts charts is colored in black —which is the color associated with death. Their background should be white or gray. Putting many dark black images in a post will attract the black eye to your blog. Don’t do it.
2. The BetFair Predicts chart widgets use a web technology incompatible with the (Web-based or PC-based) feed readers, as you can see below. Their chart widgets should be able to be displayed within feed readers (like Google Reader). Don’t embed the BetFair Predicts chart widgets in your posts, as your readers who use feed readers won’t see them, and blame you, the blogger, for being so technically clueless. Instead, do hot-link to the prediction market charts web-hosted by the main BetFair prediction exchange; they do work perfectly well when displayed within feed readers.
3. BetFair Predicts does want you to link to them, but BetFair Predicts is a sub-website that does not link to the outside. Their writers borrow [*] information from news websites, and do repackage this info without giving credits or linking to interesting external resources. For instance, in the case below, a good link could have been made in direction of Nate Silver‘s post at NewsWeek, which I linked to this morning —and which is much better informed than the poorly parroted stuff you see below.

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Boycotting BetFair Predicts is, alas, the only way to get heard. It is regrettable that the BetFair Predicts people have not engaged in a fruitful and cordial dialogue with the prediction market bloggers. The 3 pointers would have been told to them very early in their project, and I wouldn’t have had to publish a (regrettably) negative post today.

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As you see, the blog readers using a (PC-based) feed reader are not able to see the latest BetFair Predicts charts (you would get the same view with Google Reader, or any other Web-based feed reader):

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- I hope that the good people in HammerSmith will react to this post, and make the necessary changes AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

- I hope that, in the future, things will be better, and that I will enjoy embedding the BetFair Predicts chart widgets and linking to their posts.

- I respect the BetFair people, but the truth should be said: BetFair Predicts is, at this early stage, a bad product.

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[*] I changed the verb, which was indeed too strong in my original version. (Sorry for my wrong choice of vocabulary.) I meant (as it is well explained above) that they should link out to the news media where they take their primary information (CNN, NYT, BBC, The Times, etc.).

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