Hank Scorpio
Over the past 12 months, Ive turned $200 into more than $25,000 via the Intrade prediction markets.
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The best way to raise awareness for your prediction market startup is to create a long-term relationship with the Midas Oracle blogger and other web acquaintances (a.k.a. online friends).
Loic Le Meur:
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#2 – Do not pick a PR person, be the spokesperson of the company.
The best person to represent the company is not a PR person and even less an external one. It is YOU. You, the founder, you the CEO. Look at Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, they are the PR machines. Does Michael Arrington himself need a PR person to represent himself get TechCrunch known? If you launch your startup, you need to be the one representing it because you have the vision and the passion. If you are shy, get over it. Get training. Try a daily video for example 
#3 – Participation is NOT marketing.
The most important asset that a startup CEO has or should build is his community. It has nothing to do with marketing. [It] took me 8 years since I started blogging in 2003 to have a community and it is no marketing. It is about sharing every day thoughts, tips, advise, learnings with the community. It is about a continuous dialog with thousands of friends that will gladly help you building the company if you do not consider it as marketing. Of course, you can talk about your products and it may be good marketing at times but it should not be artificial. Marketing fails in communities.
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#6 – Do not see bloggers and journalists as target either, they will ignore you.
Make sure that the PR team DOES NOT RESEARCH individual preferences for contact before they reach out, they will tell you what everybody knows about them and you will contact them in the most boring way possible. Take bloggers. Everybody tries to pitch Scoble and Arrington. They are tired of the same formatted boring pitches that come to them exactly the same. They are my friends and if I had tried to pitch them like hell they would have never have. Relationships with journalists and bloggers are the same as real life. They take years. Approaching them artificially with a strong sales pitch is the best way to make sure these relationships will never happen.
#7 – Do not measure success and traffic from PR.
It’-s like if you tried to measure your relationships with your friends! Build strong links with your community, learn from them everyday, enhance your product. If you get coverage from the smallest blogger go and comment to thank him. Do not be obsessed by numbers and results, it is long term relationships that matter.
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Excellent.
When I read Loic Le Meurs post, I thought to myself, “-Nigel Eccles read that post months before I did.”- 
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Open nights for some BetFair customers at HammerSmith
Excellent.
Their HammerSmith office (in London, U.K.) is very awesome. It spreads on many stories. The waiting room is impressive. On the right, you have a glass wall that lets you see into the BetFair team who is monitoring the current state of their worldwide exchange.
1,000 times bigger than the InTrade-TradeSports office (located in between Dublin and Cork, Ireland).
I visited both —-not that many people can tell you that.
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Buzzwords are what political wiseguys use to sound all important and knowing in a profession whose prime currency is the illusion of being both. They are like secret passwords for the chattering class, the verbal equivalent of a terrorist fist jab.
Box office prediction markets dont work out at the Iowa Electronic Markets.
…- and so the IEM honcho condemns the Cantor Exchange.
I disagree.
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Will the global economic recession kill the Web 2.0 (which includes HubDub)?
Jeremy Liew:
I predict that media buyers will focus on both a flight to quality and a flight to surety. This will benefit three types of startups: companies with large audiences, companies that sell direct-response advertising, and companies that offer valuable niche content.
The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets
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A short post to thank all the people who e-mailed me to assure me of their support for this long-term endeavor.
There are so many luminaries and organizations who have said they were “-interested”- by this institute project that I am starting to think that this idea just can’-t fall apart —-the expectations are now too high, and our duty to the next generations is to succeed.
That said, I don’-t have yet the first cent for this institute, and 2009 will undergo the worst economic recession in our lifetime —-but who cares about the harsh reality, as long as we have sweet dreams.
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Ex-HSX Max Keisers public campaign to destabilize the Cantor Exchange
Financial Times:
After Enron, Hollywood bets on its own script for future profits
Published: December 20 2008 02:00 | Last updated: December 20 2008 02:00
From Mr Max Keiser.
Sir,
The potential for mischief with Cantor’s new box office futures contracts is enormous (“All eyes on Hollywood futures”, December 13). When I was running the Hollywood Stock Exchange during the 1990s I was constantly approached by the Hollywood studios asking me to move up the prices of their MovieStocks to influence the perception of their films in the weeks just before a movie was released at the box office.
I believe that when these box office futures contracts become available these same studios will redirect millions of dollars they spend on marketing to buy and sell futures contracts in order to drive the price, and therefore perception, of their own and competing studios’ films, higher or lower.
Perception is the currency in Hollywood, and pricing perception, while putting the price discovery mechanism for perception into the hands of the same hedge fund and futures trading industry that has, by and large, been responsible for the mess the global financial system now finds itself in, portends a new kind of disaster film none of us wants to see.
How long before taxpayers in the US will be asked to bail out the Hollywood studios after they have bankrupted themselves making risky futures bets trying to influence the perception of their own and other studios’ films? Does the US really need a new way to destabilise its economy with more dodgy derivatives? I think I have seen this movie before. It was called Enron.
Max Keiser,
Paris, France
Former CEO and Co-Founder, HSX Holdings/Hollywood Stock Exchange
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Financial Times: All eyes on Hollywood futures
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Previously: Cantor Exchange
Previously: Should the Hollywood Stock Exchange become a real-money betting exchange? – 2007-10-04
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InTrades bank is in trouble.
New York Times:
Revelation Rocks Bank in Ireland
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
Published: December 19, 2008
A major Irish bank was shaken Friday by the revelation of 87 million euros, or $125 million, in undisclosed personal loans to the bank’s chairman — prompting his resignation as well as that of the bank’s chief executive. Sean FitzPatrick, chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, announced his resignation late Thursday after regulators discovered that he had hidden the personal loans from shareholders. The bank’s chief executive, David Drumm, also resigned. The scandal sent the shares in the bank plummeting […]
A statement Friday from the regulator, the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland, said it became aware this year of “matters surrounding loans from Anglo Irish Bank to Sean FitzPatrick.”
“While it does not appear that anything illegal took place in relation to these loans, the financial regulator was of the view that the practices surrounding these loans were not appropriate,” the statement said.
Analysts said the scandal could affect the pace of the government’s support for the banking sector. […]
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InTrade:
Where is my money held?
Your funds are held in segregated accounts with Irelands largest banks including National Irish Bank, and Anglo Irish Bank which. Your funds are completely separate and distinct from the Exchanges own reserves.
To provide additional transparency we have introduced a unique service where an individual member can have a specific account established at our bankers within the suite of segregated accounts. Contact us for more details.
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Important reminder for those interested in the Open Institute Of Prediction Markets
Do become a member of our LinkedIn group on Prediction Markets, today.
we are now 173.
More information here.
Tonite, I will send an out e-mail to 2 or 3 persons to ask them, if they are kind enough, to review the mission statement of the Open Institute Of Prediction Markets and give me feedback. Many prediction market people and prediction market companies already told me that the concept is very “-interesting”-. It is a good start.
P.S. It won’-t be called the “-Open Institute Of Prediction Markets”-, actually. (You think I am stupid enough to tell all publicly?)
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