What’s the difference between predict a lot y Bolsa de predicciones? they have the same things or at least very similar. ?Are you the same? They have predictions, groups, events etc. the only difference is the language; BP is in spanish.

This is my answer.

The main difference is that on bolsadepredicciones (and other prediction markets like crowdcast, inklingmarkets, intrade, newsfutures, hubdub RIP, and WorldCupX.com — a new site with a nice/fresh look and good social hooks) every prediction is independent (separate) and there are at most a few thousand.

In predictalot, all predictions are interrelated (predicting Spain to win automatically increases Spain’s odds of reaching the knockout round) and there are millions and millions of predictions possible, far more than other sites.

We also think our interface is easier to use than others, but you be the judge.

Predictions are flowing in about every three minutes. Here are some from the last half hour:

Chile will finish second in their group. Current odds: 33.50%.
Spain will finish first in their group. Current odds: 52.48%.
Spain will play Portugal in the knockout stage. Current odds: 48.77%.
Roger joined the group ‘inetco’
Spain will advance further than Greece. Current odds: 76.93%.
Spain will not advance to the Knockout Stage. Current odds: 23.13%.
Spain will advance to the Knockout Stage. Current odds: 77.86%.
Both United States and Uruguay will advance to Quaterfinals. Current odds: 60.04%.

Finally, here are instructions for playing predictalot on your iPad:

1. Click Safari
2. Go to predictalot.yahoo.com

• Gamers: Make almost any prediction you can think of about March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
• Sports fans: Check the crowd’s odds: Is St. Mary’s the next Cinderella?
• Economists: Play with a true combinatorial prediction market with 9.2 quintillion outcomes and a single pool of liquidity, unlike almost any other of today’s financial and prediction markets.
• Geeks: Ponder some of the interesting computer science challenges, including approximating #P-hard problems and an eerily similar sampling problem as faced by physicists.
• Everybody’s doing it.
• Barack Obama might do it, according to VentureBeat on NYTimes.com: “President Barack Obama will likely be busy this week [but]… maybe he’ll be able to sneak a peek at Predictalot on his BlackBerry between meetings.”

For a pseudo-blogger like me intimidated by those seven letters “P u b l i s h”, I could use some prodding from ludicrous and arbitrary deadlines. Sixteen of them, in fact.

Enter World Blogging Month (WoBloMo), coming in March. The goal is simple: Blog every other day from March 1 to March 31 and you win.

I’m in. So far as I can tell so are two other people.

One of them, Mark Reid, summed up his reason for joining nicely: “By forcing regular posts I’m hoping to not indulge myself as much in my writing, find the main thing I want to say in each post and just say it.”

March is a good month to write since it happens to be a popular month to surf.

So join us and “just say it” on every odd day of March. See you on the other side.

Full disclosure.

The Yahoo! News Political Dashboard has re-launched for the general election stretch run of the 2008 US Presidential election.

From the main map you can see the status of the election in every state according to either polls or Intrade prediction market odds. Hover your mouse over a state to see current numbers or click on a state to see historical trends. On the side, you can see search trends, blogs, news, and demographic breakdowns at national and state levels.

You can also “create your own scenario” by picking who will win in every state. You can save and share your prediction and compare against markets, polls, history, or celebrities. More on ycorpblog.

Readers will be happy to see more thorough and prominent integration of prediction market prices compared to the primary election dashboard. Is that good enough to quiet Chris’s whining?

In the PM view, states are colored either bright red or bright blue, regardless of how close the race is in that state. To see a visualization that blends colors to reflect the tightness of the race, see electoralmarkets.com.

Yahoo! News also offers a candidate badge that you can display on your blog declaring your choice. The badge features national-level polls, prediction markets, search buzz, and money raised.

We’ve just added a new feature to Yoopick especially for Frenchmen Chris and Emile and citizens of nineteen other countries to place their swagor* on how many medals their country will win.

We’ve argued that the Yoopick interface is useful for predicting almost any kind of number, and since medal count is indeed a number, we thought we’d give it a try.

Besides, Lance told us it would be a good idea.

Sign up, play, enjoy, and don’t forget to tell us what you think!

Thanks,
Sharad Goel
David Pennock
Dan Reeves

* Scientific wild-ass guess, on record

Yoopick: Olympic medal count: Select

Yoopick: Olympic medal count: France: Make pick

I argue that the simplest and most common approach — to treat a multi-outcome market as a bunch of independent single-outcome markets — is wrong, even though it’s the approach taken by most prediction markets, bookmakers, and financial exchanges.

I also argue that

• IEM’s implementation is one of the worst
• Intrade’s is slightly better but not much
• Newsfutures’s and Chris Hibbert’s phantom bids approach is even better
• A host of people* hit on the best approach, many well before I did, advocating linear programming as a natural matching engine for multi-outcome markets

I am happy to report that on my suggestion intrade has listed futures contracts for 2008 search engine market share.

Here is how they work:

A contract will expire according to the percentage share of internet searches conducted in the United States in 2008. For example, if 53.5% of searches conducted in the United States in 2008 are made using Google then the contract listed for Google will expire at 53.5…

…Expiry will be based on the United States search share rankings published by Nielson Online.

I think this could be a fascinating market because:

• Search engine market share is very important to these major companies, with dramatic effects on their share prices.
• Search engine market share is fluid, so far with Google growing inexorably. However, Microsoft has cash, determination, Internet Explorer, and the willingness to experiment. Ask.com has erasers, 3D, ad budgets, and The Algorithm. Yahoo!, second in market share, often tests equal or better than Google, and new features like Search Assist are impressive.
• The media loves to write about it.
• A major search company might use the market to hedge. Well, this seems far-fetched but you never know. Certainly, from an economic risk management standpoint it would seem to make a great deal of sense. (Here, as always on this blog, I speak on behalf of myself and not my company.)

Finally, I have to comment on how refreshingly easy the process was in working with intrade. They went from suggestion to implementation in a matter of days. It’s a shame that US-based companies are in contrast stuck in stultifying legal and regulatory mud.

I’m happy to report the launch of the Yahoo! Election ’08 Political Dashboard. Using the dashboard, you can navigate through a wealth of election-related data, including prediction market data from intrade.com, polling data from Real Clear Politics, search buzz data from Yahoo!, and financial contributions data, regional demographic data, and historical voting records from AP. You can view the election landscape from the national level or dive in deeper to investigate trends state by state.

Yiling, Tej, Lance, and I played supporting roles among a cast that includes fantastic teams at Yahoo! News, UI/Design, Ops, Q&A, and more.

We’ve come a long way since 2006.

See also coverage from TechCrunch and the Yahoo! corporate blog.

Previous: From Chris “Outrageous Spin” Masse.

We’d love to hear from both producers and consumers of prediction markets technology, from companies large and small, from established players and newcomers. War stories and anecdotal reports are fine.

Let us know if you’d like to participate in the industry panel, or if you’d like to recommend someone we should invite. Thanks!