A spat of free publicity for Midas Oracle appeared recently on the PMIA’s e-mailing list, which could be sum up like this: “For the prediction market industry, Midas Oracle is both indispensable and pesky.” I usually don’t comment on what people say on that unmoderated e-mailing list because its content is of very low quality. (All the real thinkers have left that group, and its remains are maintained by EPM software vendors who exaggerate the benefits of the prediction markets.) I just want to explain to my readers why it can be said that Midas Oracle is pesky.
Actually, it is by design that Midas Oracle publishes both the good and the bad about prediction markets. The other blogs (Marginal Revolution, Overcoming Whatever, Freakonomics, Odd Head, Mercury, Wiser Than The Crowd, etc.) cherry-pick the good news —and censor the bad news. They never informed you about the 2006 NKM scandal. They never informed you about the fact that The Economist has published a rather negative take on enterprise prediction markets. They never informed you about the fact that Gartner has reported that the enterprise prediction markets are losing ground fast. And I could go on forever.
If you want to read more gentle bloggers, go reading David Pennock or Jed Christiansen. They are good, kind, conformist bloggers. They will never publish the bad news. They will never pick a fight with anyone in the industry, because their biggest dream is to belong to that industry. Midas Oracle, by design, in an independent publication —independent from the industry (and the trading-data-fed academia). This is the reason why Midas Oracle will neither join the PMIA nor appear in the $400-a-seat vendor-sponsored conferences. The ultimate goal of Midas Oracle is to publish the truth —not to make friends with CEOs and researchers. And if they rate Midas Oracle as pesky, that is fine —that means we have published in the past some bits of truth that they didn’t want you to know. The only judgment that matters for Midas Oracle is our readers’ one. The web traffic is solid, the number of feed subscribers increase each week, the PageRank is excellent, we have received plenty of kudos, and Google Web Search loves Midas Oracle —thank you very much.
Thank you, Chris.
Great summary and great statement. You are exactly correct. Keep up the good work.