How to break a successful prediction exchange in less than one week

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Whiskey Kilo (a Hollywood Stock Exchange trader):

Change is one thing, breaking the whole site and acting like its nothing happened is another. The whole concept of trading movie stocks, movie bonds and options have taken a backseat to making sure you can blog, add friends, and “Schmooze”.

The old portfolio page was color coded and extremely easy to understand, you instantly knew if you were making H$ or losing your shirt. Now the current portfolio page is a small box, one colour, light grey on a white backround and the type is half the size of the font here, also you can only see 12 stocks at any given moment. Whoever OK’d this part of the site has to have never traded any shares online before.

From what I can gather, there was a beta version of this 3rd generation of the game, but no one paid any attention to the any of the feedback, two days after this new rollout, HSX.com started calling this new version a beta game, and what HSX staff there is say that portfolios are now their priority. However the only things that really work right now are the blogs, which pay H$10,000 a posting, adding friends pays traders H$1000, Online Polls, and Schmoozing. which paid initially H$1000, but now pays H$100 per reply. The only reason I see for paying traders to blog is to bring more eyeballs to the garish 728?90 and 300?225 ads on each page to pump the number of advertising views on HSX. But if this is part of the grand scheme here, I can’t see Gold coin or Forex advertisers closing sales from a bunch of 13 years because all the veteran traders have left in disgust.

I welcome Jed [*] to read the HSX Support page: http://www.hsx.com/cms/forums/support and look around, I shudder to think this all is going to be a B-School case study on how to kill a successful site in under a week.

[*] Jed Christiansen, who put up a comment in defense of HSX (Jed systematically defends the people I slam on Midas Oracle) &#8212-and who has just begun an MBA education.

12 thoughts on “How to break a successful prediction exchange in less than one week

  1. The Hollywood Stock Exchange traders are revolting against the new "social networking" functionalities brought in there by some snake-oil "social media" consultant. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] Previously: #1 – #2 […]

  2. Meet Andrew Wing, the recently appointed CEO of Cantor Entertainment, who (along with Alex Costakis) has lead to the complete and definitive destruction of the Hollywood Stock Exchange. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] #1 – #2 – […]

  3. At inception, I created an "Internet usability" category, and, since, I have published many Jakob Nielsen stories. Many wondered why I would bother. Now, the Midas Oracle readers can understand why. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] Chris F. Masse October 27th, 2008 These traders are talking down the newly redesigned Hollywood Stock Exchange website. […]

  4. Chris F. Masse said:

    Thanks to my being critical when it is needed, I have been able to amass an audience you can only dream of.

    (And don’t worry for me. I am doing fine. Go back to school.)

  5. Chris F. Masse said:

    Jed, I believe that what is on a LinkedIn profile is public. It is something that that person chooses to disclose —or not.

  6. The Hollywood Stock Exchange traders are revolting against the new "social networking" functionalities brought in there by some snake-oil "social media" consultant. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] Previously: #1 – #2 […]

  7. Meet Andrew Wing, the recently appointed CEO of Cantor Entertainment, who (along with Alex Costakis) has lead to the complete and definitive destruction of the Hollywood Stock Exchange. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] #1 – #2 – […]

  8. At inception, I created an "Internet usability" category, and, since, I have published many Jakob Nielsen stories. Many wondered why I would bother. Now, the Midas Oracle readers can understand why. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] Chris F. Masse October 27th, 2008 These traders are talking down the newly redesigned Hollywood Stock Exchange website. […]

  9. Chris F. Masse said:

    Thanks to my being critical when it is needed, I have been able to amass an audience you can only dream of.

    (And don’t worry for me. I am doing fine. Go back to school.)

  10. Chris F. Masse said:

    Jed, I believe that what is on a LinkedIn profile is public. It is something that that person chooses to disclose —or not.