Why InTrade CEO John Delaney, TradeSports acting CEO John Delaney, BetFair CEO David Yu, HubDub CEO Nigel Eccles and NewsFutures CEO Emile Servan-Schreiber should supplicate me to develop my prediction market journalism project

No Gravatar

200 web visitors (coming from Google) reached my John Edwards post, published yesterday afternoon (ET).

10% of them followed my links to the 2 HubDub prediction markets on John Edwards.

Remember that those web stats count only the web visitors, not the feed subscribers &#8212-who are more numerous, and whom I focus more on.

TAKEAWAY: A popular PMJ website, which would associate fresh news and betting recommendations, would send many people to the prediction markets.

The mainstream media and the classic bloggers will never deal with real-money prediction markets the way they should be dealt with &#8212-for multiple reasons (moral, ethical, legal, etc.). And for other reasons, they will never link to the play-money prediction markets.

Look Justin Wolfers at the Wall Street Journal: He is the most excited about prediction markets. Yet, he does not link to InTrade directly. He does not link to the InTrade real-money prediction markets. Hence, his blah blah blah does not translate into more revenues for InTrade.

What it takes is a brand-new media organization, entirely devoted to prediction markets, and run by die-hard prediction market people.

Please, guys, help me.

  • cfm |-at-| midasoracle |.|-com-|
  • chrisfmasse |-at-| gmail |.|-com-|

Marginal Revolution vs. Freakonomics vs. Overcoming Bias vs. Midas Oracle

No Gravatar

Here are the stats about the feed subscribers to these blogs who use either Google Reader or iGoogle.

To interpret these data, you should know that:

  • The web visitors are not counted.
  • The PC-based feed subscribers are not counted.
  • The Web-based feed subscribers who use other feed readers than Google are not counted.
  • In the case of Marginal Revolution, which was one of the defaults proposed by Google Reader until recently, many feed subscribers do not actually read this blog.
  • A vertical blog like Midas Oracle, which deals only with prediction markets, is necessary far less popular than more horizontal blogs, which can publish about everything (including sex, as it has been the case in the past with those 3 economics blogs).

BEWARE THE BLOGGING ACADEMICS: They are not blogging to inform us -they are blogging to promote themselves.

No Gravatar

The New York Times on the brand-new SSRN ranking functionality:

Bloggers like Mr. Reynolds [a university professor] tend to do well on the site, since they can promote their work and offer links to their articles.

Social Science Research Network – (SSRN)

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The best research papers on prediction markets
  • 2008 Electoral Map
  • American Enterprise Institute’s Center For Regulatory And Market Studies (Policy Markets)
  • IIF’s SIG on Prediction Markets
  • Science
  • Why did prediction markets do well in the pre-polling era, professor Strumpf?
  • Mozilla FireFox users, do you have trouble downloading academic papers (as PDF files) from SSRN?

The best blogs on prediction markets

No Gravatar

CFM: Blogs

Midas Oracle: Links

Send me your blog URL, if you write on prediction markets &#8212-and I&#8217-ll Include it in the list (maybe :-D ).

The new kid on the block is The Quantified Pundit. Great blog name. :-D Bookmark it, and subscribe to its site feed. I recommend it highly.

  • Andrew &#8220-Bert&#8221- Black — Category: &#8220-BetFair&#8220-
  • Ask Markets —
  • Ashish Singal
  • Betdaq Exchange Views [U.K.] —
  • Betting @ BetFair [U.K.] —
  • Betting Market [U.K.] —
  • Bo Cowgill —
  • Caveat Bettor
  • Chris Hibbert — Category: &#8220-prediction markets&#8220-
  • Consensus Point — Decommissioned.
  • Freakonomics — Category: &#8220-prediction markets&#8220-
  • George Tziralis [Greece] —
  • HubDub
  • Inkling Markets
  • Jed Christiansen
  • Marginal Revolution
  • Media Predict —
  • Midas Oracle .COM – Group Blog on Prediction Markets For People
  • Midas Oracle .NET – Group Blog on Prediction Markets For Enterprises —
  • Midas Oracle .ORG – Group Blog on Prediction Markets For All
  • Mike Linksvayer — Category: &#8220-prediction markets&#8220-
  • NewsFutures
  • Odd Head — Category: &#8220-prediction markets&#8220-
  • Overcoming Bias — Category: &#8220-prediction markets&#8220-
  • Political Betting [U.K.] —
  • PopSci PPX —
  • Reality Markets —
  • Risk Markets And Politics —
  • The Sim Exchange —
  • Usable Markets — Category: &#8220-prediction markets&#8220-
  • Washington Stock Exchange —

Quite a small list.

Maybe, in the next update, I&#8217-ll add The Washington Wire from the WSJ. They seem to go the Wolfers route. WIll see.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • NewsFutures powers the prediction exchange of a prestigious French science magazine.
  • DIY enterprise prediction markets as revelators of institutional lies
  • So far, the Prediction Market Industry Association (PMIA) is a shallow organization run by a bunch of delirium-tremens incompetents. — It sounds too European, too French. — Yeah, it’s too French. — All words and no actions. — Hot air in a golden-painted balloon ready to burst.
  • The best presentations from the world’s best conference on enterprise prediction markets —ever
  • John Delaney and Mark Davies’ P.R. tactics suck.
  • Predictify is about building track records of human predictors.
  • Prediction & Decision Markets — Robin Hanson Edition

The simplicity and social utility of the gravatars explained to Tom W. Bell by blog guru Chris Pirillo.

No Gravatar

Tom W. Bell,

Please, watch this short video, and get yourself a gravatar. It&#8217-s easy and fun.

The little difference between Midas Oracle and Chris Pirillo&#8217-s blog is that he set up things so that when somebody does not have a gravatar, a randomly-pixelized image appears, while on Midas Oracle, there&#8217-s a face pic of an anonymous person that appears.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • How you should read Midas Oracle
  • The best prediction exchanges
  • “There will be no media consumption left in ten years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”
  • Hillary Clinton won’t be on the Democratic ticket. — It’s not going to happen. — N-E-V-E-R. — Not a chance. — Period.
  • Suggestion for WordPress — Subscribers’ Capabilities
  • This is why I said that those who believe that Hillary Clinton has a chance to be on the Democratic ticket are “clueless”.
  • WEB EXCLUSIVE: — The annoted, historical, compound chart that those triple morons at the BetFair blog are hiding from their readers’ view. — It is located in a secret cache, linked to behind a picture of Hillary Clinton. — Curious place to locate a prediction market chart. — I bet nobody downloaded that chart. —

How Midas Oracle got started off…

No Gravatar

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Excellent article about enterprise prediction markets and Inkling Markets —with a good word for Robin Hanson, who invented MSR.
  • HubDub limitations
  • BetFair Developer Program use Joomla! as their blog software (and CMS).
  • Lawsuit aiming at compelling the office of the United States trade representative to produce a copy of its compensation settlement with the European Union over the United States’ withdrawal of gambling services from the General Agreement on Trade in Services.
  • Iraq War = “not necessary”, “a serious strategic blunder” — US News Media = “complicit enablers” in the manipulation of the public (“the propaganda campaign”) — George W. Bush turned away “from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.”
  • JASON RUSPINI’S CROCKERY: The Brain states forcefully that they are not “event futures”, but “binary options”. Still, as soon as he premieres prediction markets on tax rates at InTrade, he calls them “tax futures” —of course.
  • Tasmania’s Prime Minister who licenced BetFair Australia departs “abruptly”.

Folks, you are reading this within Google Reader, ARENT YOU??

No Gravatar

Best RSS Newsreaders

How to use the Midas Oracle feeds&#8230-

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • A second look at HedgeStreet’s comment to the CFTC about “event markets”
  • Since YooPick opened their door, Midas Oracle has been getting, daily, 2 or 3 dozens referrals from FaceBook.
  • US presidential hopeful John McCain hates the Midas Oracle bloggers.
  • If you have tried to contact Chris Masse thru the Midas Oracle Contact Form, I’m terribly sorry to inform you that your message was not delivered to the recipient.
  • THE CFTC’s SECRET AGENDA —UNVEILED.
  • “Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S & P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses.”
  • Meet professor Thomas W. Malone (on the right), from the MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence.