Monday, January 28, 2008

Hubdub - social news prediction engine

Hubdub seems to be the first prediction market for news stories.  Coupled with a memetracker (like on a rudimentary evel Google News or the fantastic Memeorandum and its tech-centric cousin TechMeme) this could be amazingly powerful.
Lazyweb: Memeorandum+Hubdub mashup

I could have used this last Saturday while I was tracking the spread of the Bill Clinton / Jesse Jackson story and making calls on which papers would put it on A1.

1 comment:

Jenna said...

Political Prediction Markets

http://predictions.wsj.com/aav2/menu.jsp


"The WSJ Political Market is an exchange marketplace, like a stock market, except the 'stocks' traded are political candidates and the currency you'll use is fantasy. Users can trade contracts that are tied to the outcome of future political events, from individual state primaries to the general election.

Each participant is given ten thousand fictional WSJ dollars (WSJ$10,000) upon registration. You can use this fictional money to buy and sell contracts - buy if you think the outcome is likely, and sell if you don't. The price of a contract reflects the market's assessment of how likely it is to happen. Your performance will be tracked and the best traders will be ranked on our Leaderboard page.

Futures markets such as this one have been gaining attention for their powerful predictive capabilities. The prices on the WSJ Political Market reflect trading from millions of users via our partner InTrade. Sift through the data to gain unique insights into the 2008 Presidential race."

According to Cass R. Sunstein's book, Infotopia, political prediction markets, such as the University of Iowa's IEM, tend to be highly accurate, and often outperform political polls. The WSJ Political Market is powered by InTrade, which is also mentioned in Sunstein's discussion of prediction markets. Sunstein notes that "InTrade, a political market based in Dublin, accurately predicted not only the 2004 victory for President Bush but also the particular outcomes in the battleground states"(page 111).