Archive for the tag 'Nigel Eccles'
Nigel Eccles guest-blogged at TechCrunch UK that the spot at DEMO 2008 cost HubDub 18,500 bucks ($18,500). Was it worth it? Did that Scottish smart a** overpay? What do you think?
Chris F. Masse August 18th, 2008
Presumptuous
Chris F. Masse August 15th, 2008
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Jed Christiansen will never be a cheerleader for the prediction market industry as long as he holds those wrong views about betting on sports.
InTrade-TradeSports CEO John Delaney and HubDub CEO Nigel Eccles might be seen as “prediction market gurus”, at least by some —I doubt very strongly that many industry people will add Jed in the list, after they have read the conformist bullshit that he sent to the CFTC.
We are still waiting Jed’s reaction on Sean Park’s comment. Cat got your tongue, Jed? At other times, we couldn’t stop you.
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Who is the Steve Jobs of the prediction market industry?
Chris F. Masse August 4th, 2008
The award goes to… the envelope, please…
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John Delaney and Emile Servan-Schreiber are good, but they are too much ignorant of information technology.
Adam Siegel and David Perry are too much focused on their internal process.
BetFair seems to be a consensual machine. It’s not a place for heroes.
David Pennock is an admirable man and a great research scientist, but he is an ambulatory marketing disaster.
As for Robin “High IQ” Hanson, he is a great inventor (MSR), but he has not proved yet that he is a great innovator.
His little fanboy, Chris Hibbert, is a great software architect, but he is totally impermeable to pleasantry. [I completely forgot to tell you that that was my criterion #1. 
]
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WORLD-WIDE WEB EXCLUSIVE (PLEASE, DO CREDIT “MIDAS ORACLE” FOR THE SCOOP): Here’s what Nigel Eccles drinks when he works on the HubDub mission statement.
Chris F. Masse July 26th, 2008
What's on Nigel Eccles' desk at HubDub.
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Quoting HubDub forecasts in news stories about future events will be as common as quoting stock prices in financial stories is today or (in the UK) quoting betting odds for political elections.
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In my view, the only way our good friend Nigel Eccles would succeed would be to get HubDub on television —like our good friend Max Keiser did with the Hollywood Stock Exchange in the end of the 90s.
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HubDub will get quoted in the future, just like the Hollywood Stock Exchange is, today… — PROBABILITY = 33%, AT BEST.
Chris F. Masse July 25th, 2008
I fully appreciate the work that Emile and others have done but just because something hasn’t worked before doesn’t mean it can’t happen. [...] Sometimes ideas take time and a fresh perspective before they achieve their full potential. [...]
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My thoughts:
- The future is present today as a seed. If we examine today’s seed under a microscope, we can see part of the future. The fact is that the prices/probabilities from NewsFutures’ play-money prediction markets are NEVER quoted by journalists and bloggers. They quote only InTrade, TradeSports, BetFair and the Hollywood Stock Exchange.
- “Time” can change that, indeed, provided that HubDub multiplies volumes by a factor of one million —which is what I wish for them.
- I don’t see the “fresh perspective” that HubDub would be bringing to the table. HubDub resembles a lot to NewsFutures. (The differences in terms of market design, automated market maker, and breath of topics, are a minor.) HubDub is a generalist, play-money prediction exchange, just like NewsFutures is.
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Nigel Eccles’ flawed “vision” about HubDub shows that he hasn’t any.
Chris F. Masse July 24th, 2008
[IMPORTANT NOTE: This present post is critical of one point expressed by Nigel Eccles, but, overall, I like this Scottish guy, and I enjoy HubDub's prediction markets a lot.]
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Quoting HubDub forecasts in news stories about future events will be as common as quoting stock prices in financial stories is today or (in the UK) quoting betting odds for political elections.
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Nigel,
my good friend,
Quit drinking the Scotch whisky and listen up 2 minutes.
I appreciate the formidable effort you made to start up HubDub and I am delightful its prediction markets are now well traded. In that perspective, HubDub is already a success. And I agree that many HubDub prediction market prices are meaningful.
However, I strongly disagree with the idea that, at one point in the future, the free world’s journalists and bloggers will rush to quote HubDub’s market-generated probabilities. Here’s why.
See, my good Scottish friend, you’re not the first fellow to tackle this problem. A guy named Emile Servan-Schreiber, with another fellow named Maurice Balick, created NewsFutures (a play-money prediction exchange quite similar to HubDub, except that HubDub uses MSR whereas NewsFutures uses CDA) in the year 2000 —at the time most contemporary prediction market people were still drinking their mother’s milk.
For the Midas Oracle readers who are just surfacing from an Afghan cave, Emile Servan-Schreiber is:
- a veteran of the prediction market industry;
- a well educated (PhD) and smart man;
- a gifted exchange executive, with a very good understanding of Internet usability;
- a successful entrepreneur (NewsFutures has been profitable for years);
- the only international prediction market expert (NewsFutures has clients in North-America, Europe, and Asia);
- the author of 2 academic papers on prediction markets (one of them established the predictive power of the play-money prediction markets);
- one of the most often interviewed prediction market people;
- well connected in the Academia (2 prediction market luminaries are on the NewsFutures scientific advisory board);
- the winner of a bet he made against Justin Wolfers;
- etc.
In other words, Emile Servan-Schreiber is far from being a moron.
Still, in 8 years of existence, NewsFutures’s prediction market prices have NEVER been quoted (over than occasionally) in the Mediasphere or the Blogosphere.
What makes you think that a cocky Scottish guy will be able to achieve what a smart Frenchman has miserably failed to achieve?
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The answer to Nigel Eccles’ mission statement resides in a collective effort from all prediction market people and organizations to favor the development of prediction market journalism.
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HubDub CEO Nigel Eccles teaches you startup lessons.
Chris F. Masse July 10th, 2008
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Challenge #1: Get that “Bambi Francisco” to pronounce your last name correctly.
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Americans love rankings, but Americans hate to be assessed subjectively.
Chris F. Masse June 27th, 2008
I am afraid that Nigel Eccles’ answer to The Numbers Guy does not go deep enough into the arguments.
The Numbers Guy (and his interviewees) made some points that Nigel does not address.
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See his Video Response.
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PS: Nigel, Seesmic is a piece of shit. The video does not go into the feeds (unlike YouTube or Blip.TV.)
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Background Info: The Numbers Guy: HubDub’s PunditWatch is not as rigorous as Philip Tetlock was.
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