Chris F. Masse August 21st, 2008
I am usually very sympathetic to Inkling Markets and Adam Siegel. I think they are the most professional prediction market consultants. However, I am more impressed by the recent Xpree hiring than by the recent Inkling hiring. Leslie Fine is a market design specialist and a fine researcher, who will bring credibility and expertise to Xpree. Very good coup by mister Mat Fogarty. I am very impressed. Wow.
Chris F. Masse August 4th, 2008
Inking Markets and NewsFutures are graded 6 / 10.
Consensus Point and Xpree are graded 5 / 10.
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My great friend David Perry of Consensus Point is making a strategic mistake by insisting on discretion and secrecy.
I told him 10 times.
To no avail.
Pissing in a violin in order to create a symphony would have been more fruitful.
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PageRank is important.
One day, we will learn in the Wall Street Journal that a Fortune-500 CEO is fired by the board for a low PageRank.
That will happen one day; you will see.
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The Prediction Market Consultants
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Chris F. Masse June 24th, 2008
They picked the worst possible blogging platform: Blogger. 
— Completely crappy. — And their blog layout is ugly. — Awful.
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Chris F. Masse June 10th, 2008
Awesome slides in bold.
Brought to you by Koleman Strumpf (circa November 2007):
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Henry Berg, Microsoft <slides>
Discussant: Robin Hanson (George Mason Department of Economics) <slides>
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Christina Ann LaComb, GE (The Imagination Market; abstract is free, text is gated) <slides>
Discussant: Marco Ottaviani (Kellogg School of Management, Management and Strategy) <slides>
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Dawn Keller, Best Buy (Best Buy’s TAGTRADE Market) <slides>
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Bo Cowgill, Google (Putting Crowd Wisdom to Work) <slides>
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Jim Lavoie, Co-Founder and CEO, Rite-Solutions <slides>
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David Perry, Co-Founder and President, Consensus Point <slides>
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Mat Fogarty, Founder and CEO, Xpree Inc <slides>
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Tom W. Bell, Chapman University School of Law <slides>
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Chris F. Masse May 7th, 2008
Xpree’s Mat Fogarty (responding to Jed Christiansen, even though Jed didn’t talk to him but to Emile Servan-Schreiber 
—argh, kids, today, interrupting adults’ conversations ):
We have had success combining voting to rank the ideas, then prediction markets to analyze the potential of the top ranked ideas. The phrasing in the prediction market needs to be quite specific, if we invested in idea A, how long would it take to get to market? how much would we sell in the first year? If the company does not invest in idea A, then the money bet in the market is returned to the user.
With long development cycles this can be challenging as it requires keeping the market active until ship, or for the sales estimate, one year after ship.
Of course, you could use a preference market - but this has issues of information cascades and rewarding of group think.
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Here’s the Xpree stuff which Mat is talking about.
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Chris F. Masse April 18th, 2008
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Doc, I didn’t say that “this effort by Starbucks somehow implies a devaluation of enterprise prediction markets.” I said that it implies a devaluation of the enterprise prediction markets that are overhyped as intra-corporation communication tools —I’m of course fine with them used as forecasting tools, which is our collective goal from day one (IEM in 1988). The complexity of prediction markets is bearable if and only if they are a bit more accurate than the other mechanisms. Now, if the objective is to get feedback and suggestions from employees, no need to pay for this complexity —a simple voting mechanism is more than enough and will do the trick.
In that regard, I would point to Xpree, which use that simple, voting mechanism when and where it makes sense to use it.
Mat Fogarty is well versed in the discipline of forecasting, and should be listened to more, here, I believe.
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