In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site.

The bet has been expired on the “YES” side. Dave Winer (representing the bloggers) won —and Martin Nisenholtz (representing the New York Times —at the time, in 2002) lost.

We decided that a weblog had to be something that would have been recognized as a blog in [2002]. This includes ad supported blogs and commercial blogs like those of the NY Times. While the bettors argument in this case discusses why non-commercial content will beat out commercial content, Winer never provides a definition of a weblog. As it turns out, including major news source blogs like those of the NY Times or sources like Wikipedia do not affect the ultimate outcome in the case of this bet, but they certainly could have.

Hummm… How come Long Bets could have let people register a not-so-well-defined bet? Long Bets does not seem to be a serious organization to me.

As for what it all means: The blogging software packages are better content management systems than the other, older CMS packages. The blogging software and their specific usage (free access, content parcelisation, dates and keywords inserted in the URLs, peer linking, open comments, etc.) fit better in the Google super system.

Psstt… One idea for the prediction exchanges like NewsFutures or InTrade would be to open prediction markets on Long Bets topics just weeks before the expiration dates. The event derivative contracts would say that the expiry judge is Long Bets. Emile Servan-Schreiber and Michael Giberson, any thought?

External Link: TechCrunch on what is a blog.

Indeed, the floated prediction is the contract. Plus, the intent of the contract and the letter of the contract should always coincide, no matter what.

Chris Hibbert contested my 6 Golden Rules:

Chris Masse has suggested that the intent and the wording of a claim should always coincide. But this isn’t possible in practice, as is well known to anyone who has managed or participated in the process from start to finish. Claims that seem clear when written (remember that it’s a goal to make the outcome hard to determine at the outset) often turn out to be unclear later. Over time, the meanings of terms mutate, and their application to specific questions is modified as events transpire.

My (Delayed, Sorry For That) Answer To Chris Hibbert:

Chris Hibbert hints at his non-paid work for the Foresight Exchange, where he is sometimes an expiry judge for some play-money prediction markets. The big difference with the BetFair-Senate or the TradeSports-NKM cases is that all eyes are on those real-money prediction exchanges (a.k.a. betting exchanges), whereas nobody gives the first fig about the public, play-money prediction exchanges (the exception being the Hollywood Stock Exchange).

Chris Hibbert could make all the wrong calls of the Earth on the Foresight Exchange, nobody would listen to the screwed-up prediction market traders (if any), because nobody cares.

Addendum: Chris Hibbert has posted a comment.

Follow-Up Blog Post:

Chris Masse’s 6 Golden Rules are complete crap. – Dixit Chris Hibbert.