I was recently alerted that Betfair, a betting and prediction market site, has created something called the Betfair Academy, which, as described on their website, is “specifically designed to teach our customers how to explain and demonstrate Betfair effectively.”

Usually when someone in my profession reads something like this it raises red flags. Namely, reading between the lines, we hear: a) this website is not very usable, and b) because this website is not very usable, we need to train people how to use it.

While I have no specifics on the number of people who use the site, nor have I done a formal heuristic review (or usability testing) of the site, a move like this usually smacks of desperation.

Training, the way of the Dodo
Training used to be something that was considered part of every software rollout. And while it is still sometimes seen in the world of enterprise software, it is rarely, if ever seen when it comes to public websites.

The reasons for this should be fairly obvious. It’s virtually impossible to train everyone who comes to a publicly available website. And, if you considered it, it would be prohibitively expensive. So instead of training users, builders of public websites have focused on usability. And this makes sense. A usable website is less likely to turn users off (surely Amazon would not be the success story it is if everyone had to be trained to use it), and it costs less.

Which is what makes the Betfair Academy so fascinating. Presumably Betfair has decided that the least costly solution is to train a few people, and then get them to train all their buddies. It’s a novel solution, but will it succeed …?

The users just need more training!
“They just need more training!” is a fairly typical old school response to poor usability. I have heard this response to poor usability in all sorts of environments: start ups, enterprise software, and now, finally, public websites.

It’s a knee jerk response, and it is usually a programmer or “IT person” who says it. After all, it’s not their fault that the users can’t figure out their elegantly designed applications. It’s the user’s fault.

But you’ll be happy to know that I do see this attitude changing – and often in very traditional environments. At my last job the IT department finally admitted to themselves that they could not build usable applications, and that they needed help.

Perhaps, once their Academy fails to sufficiently grow the user base, Betfair will finally admit it, too.

As always, thanks for listening.

~alex

These and other predictions of dire consequences in Iraq and the region are by no means a certainty.

Awww, that’s nice. And one of the word probability:

But there are actions that the U.S. and Iraqi governments, working together, can and should take to increase the probability of avoiding disaster there, and increase the chance of success.

Note that the report isn’t assigning probability, rather asserting someone should take care to increase the probability of a good outcome!

The report’s analysis of four often advanced policy courses (Section I(C): withdrawal, stay the course, more troops, devolution) consists of a string of cheap assertions.

…

Unfortunately no private sector prediction market has stepped in to fill this vacuum.`A little over two weeks ago as speculation about the ISG and potential changes in U.S. policy ramped up I looked for prediction markets relevant to Iraq and found three, all play money, one at each of FX, Newsfutures, and WSX. Unfortunately all are concerned with U.S. troop levels or deaths and none are conditional on other events.

So I created a market on Inkling with four stocks: will the Iraq Body Count increase by 40,000 or more from May through December of 2007, conditioned on whether U.S. troop levels fell below 100,000 in April 2007.

The latter will be judged based on the outcome of the Newsfutures contract USLEAV07. It seemed to make some sense to condition on an existing contract which already had some history and volume. As far as I know this is the first time a contract on one prediction market site has been conditioned on the outcome of a contract on another site. Not that it matters. This market was not a rare jewel, but an utter failure.

The market has attracted a total of two traders have made two trades, leaving prices almost exactly at their starting points, while Newsfutures’ USLEAV07 has fallen by over half. There’s nearly free Inkles for the taking. Actually there are many markets at Inkling offering nearly free Inkles, including two Democratic U.S. presidential nomination markets with sharply different prices for some candidates, but apparently nobody wants Inkles.

Links to Iraq-related markets referenced above are at my personal blog.

…

If I create a play money market again I shall do so on FX, which at least has a base of knowledgeable traders, some of whom are fairly motivated to improve their FX score. I make an exception for playing with new sites.

Like our host I would like to see more (any!) socially relevant real money prediction markets. Over a year ago Masse said the solution is always ‘better marketing’. Slightly less than a year ago he said The key to more socially relevant prediction markets is better marketing. Stay tuned, folks.

I’m not certain that marketing is the critical piece (Tradesports hasn’t really tried “if you build it, they will come” though this hasn’t entirely stopped academics from using prediction and other market prices and fortuitous circumstances to make some socially relevant inferences), but it couldn’t hurt when combined with a tiny bit of vision.

I’m staying tuned.