Yearly Archives: 2008

WordPress is a bit like WikiMedia (the software powering Wikipedia), now.

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Two weeks ago, I was seeking a WordPress way to have multiple authors for a post or a page. I found 2 interesting plugins.

  1. The CO-AUTHORS plugin, which does what it says. One specific post or page can be assigned two or more co-author(s) by the blog editor. Very interesting. (I don&#8217-t get why the plugin developer forbids the co-authors to &#8220-edit&#8221- the post/page, though. Mystery, which I will try to clear up with the software architect of this plugin.)
  2. The ROLE MANAGER plugin (not listed in the official WordPress plugin directory), which changes the standard WordPress matrix of roles and capabilities. It can redefine the capabilities of one category of users (i.e., one &#8220-role&#8221-), and can change the capabilities of one individual, but won&#8217-t assign common capabilities on a post/page-by-post/page basis (unlike the CO-AUTHORS plugin). To put it in another way, the ROLE MANAGER plugin can be used to extend (or restrict) the capabilities of the blog authors. Right now, they can only publish a post, not a page. In this instance, they would be allowed to write and edit pages &#8212-without the need for the blog administrator to promote these authors as full editors (which would be tricky since those multiple editors could then edit their peers&#8217- posts &#8211-not acceptable in a big group blog with 71 blog posters).

Very interesting.

On Midas Oracle, one could have:

  • Authors Mike Giberson and Adam Siegel writing together a post on &#8220-How Great An Exchange Inkling Markets Is&#8220-.
  • Authors Chris Masse, Mike Giberson, David Pennock and Jason Ruspini writing together a page on &#8220-The Ultimate Prediction Market Definition&#8220-.
  • Etc., etc., etc.
  • If plenty of co-authors collaborate on a post/page, then my hope is that Midas Oracle could become more than just a &#8220-blog&#8221-, and be also a vertical encyclopedia on prediction markets. (Of course, participation inequality remains an issue.)

[External Reading: For the life of you, don’t miss this blog post by Tim O’Reilly on Wikipedia.]

&#8212-

UPDATE: The creator of the CO-AUTHORS plugin writes back to me:

Not allowing all of the co-authors the ability to edit a page is not by design- I just have to do more research on WordPress permissions to find out how to do so, if even it is possible.

I wonder whether using the two plugins together is the solution&#8230-

&#8212-

UPDATE: My current thought is to give each Midas Oracle author the capability to create, write up and edit his/her own page(s). And then to assign co-authors to some post(s) and page(s), on a case-by-case basis.

Prediction Markets as Content, Part 2

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Cross posted from UsableMarkets

Back in April I started talking about how Prediction Markets will be part of many news organizations&#8217- &#8220-citizen-generated&#8221- content strategy going forward.

To quote myself (which seems kind of a rude thing to do, doesn&#8217-t it &#8230-?):

It seems as if no self-respecting news organization can ignore the Web 2.0 movement these days. Many now have some sort of &#8220-wisdom of the crowds&#8221- style content, in addition to RSS feeds, blogs, and so on.

Midas Oracle has covered some of the new relationships that are developing. I recently talked about MarketWatch.

Expect more to happen &#8230- and perhaps quickly, too.

That was nine months ago. Since then we&#8217-ve seen the WSJ, the FT, Reuters, CNN, and others (perhaps everyone can think of a couple or three) begin to dabble in or seriously consider prediction markets. With Inkling and InTrade in the white label prediction market business, the barriers to setting one up are obviously low enough that a certain amount of me-too-ism can easily prevail.

But there is a risk, and those of us who care about the success of the prediction market industry shouldn&#8217-t get too excited about these developments just yet.

First, it remains to be see whether these new prediction markets can attract significant numbers of users. The prediction market industry is already saturated with prediction markets and games. So, despite their powerful brands, I&#8217-m not confident that the FT or the WSJ can attract large followings (although I&#8217-d be happy to be wrong about that).

Ah ha, you may say, we don&#8217-t need a lot of users to generate accurate predictions. The MSR, and automated market makers will help solve the problem. But the problem is not one of generating accurate predictions, but about generating page views. Newspapers (even online) are advertising driven. If you can&#8217-t generate sufficient page views, and you&#8217-re paying too much to manage the prediction market on your site, then it&#8217-s vulnerable to being cut. In fact, I wouldn&#8217-t be surprised if once this US election cycle is over that some of these markets fall away.

And, if the news organizations are really interested in the predictions for predictions sake, they can always simply use someone else&#8217-s.

As always, thanks for listening.
~alex (UsableMarkets)

The future of futurism: crowds or entrepreneurs?

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Chris Masse has already linked to The Economist story on futurists, which ends with a plug for prediction markets:

The most heeded futurists these days are not individuals, but prediction markets, where the informed guesswork of many is consolidated into hard probability. Will Osama bin Laden be caught in 2008? Only a 15% chance, said Newsfutures in mid-October 2007. Would Iran have nuclear weapons by January 1st 2008? Only a 6.6% chance, said Inkling Markets. Will George Bush pardon Lewis “Scooter” Libby? A better-than-40% chance, said Intrade. There may even be a prediction market somewhere taking bets on immortality. But beware: long- and short-sellers alike will find it hard to collect.

Like Chris, I&#8217-m partial to the plug for prediction markets, but the story from the past year that best fits the five pieces of advice to futurists in the article (think small, think short-term, admit uncertainty, embed in an industry, and listen more) was not about the &#8220-wisdom of crowds.&#8221- Rather, this profile by Michael Lewis of hedge fund entrepreneur/insurance risk modeler John Seo in the NYT Magazine seems to fit the bill.

[NOTE: This post is a somewhat revised version of a posting on Knowledge Problem: What will futurists do in the future? Chris has also already linked to the story on John Seo that was published in August 2007.]

Never underestimate a one-trick pony.

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Robet Scoble:

3. Pay attention to the “unimportant” people in your life. Last year this goofy guy walked into the CES BlogHaus. I introduced him to a few people and did an interview with him. He wasn’t famous. Didn’t have a blog. Hadn’t started a business or done anything that anyone would qualify as “important.” But between January and now he’s become a New York Times best selling author and he’s gotten me onto CNBC and the New York Times. All cause I paid attention to him back when he wasn’t “somebody.”

I begin to like this guy&#8230- Robert Scobble&#8230- :-D

Testing the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin… and thinking aloud about a prediction market plugin.

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UPDATE: I have completely re-written this blog post. I have just found out (at the bottom of a FAQ, which was itself linked from the bottom of a page!) that the Yahoo! Shortcuts only works when the WordPress rich, visual editor is disabled. That explains all. So I am now typing this with the raw editor, and will now make another test of the plugin for WordPress.

Let&#8217-s try it in avant-premiere&#8230- well, that is, before David Pennock installs it on his own blog. Let&#8217-s type some pointless sentences with plenty of keywords in them, to see how the plugin reacts:

  • Google&#8217-s Bo Cowgill&#8217-s one is longer than Yahoo!&#8217-s David Pennock&#8217-s one &#8212-I&#8217-m talking about their experience as administrator of enterprise prediction markets (what were you thinking of, this is a serious blog).
  • One Google stock can buy ten Yahoo! stocks.
  • Google&#8217-s street address in Mountain View, California, Vs. Yahoo!&#8217-s street address.

So as I typed the sentences above, the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin has found 2 shortcuts. OK. I click on &#8220-Review this post&#8221-. It takes me painfully to another page, where I can accept or refuse the implements. The plugin did embed things under &#8220-Google&#8221- and &#8220-Yahoo! Shortcuts&#8221-. Problem: I have no idea what the hell they have embedded in my text. Let&#8217-s hit the &#8220-Publish&#8221- button to see what it looks like.

UPDATE: Does not work. Nothing appears on the published blog post. :(

APPENDIX: Screen shot #1. – Screen shot #2.

ABOUT A PREDICTION MARKET PLUGIN: It should be simpler than that. I vote against the automatic detection. And I vote against the machine dictating you what should be inserted. What about freedom of choice???? I will go for a manual selection of prediction market charts in a list, and the blogger would select the one(s) he/she wants to insert &#8212-and he/she would mark exactly where to insert it.