Tag Archives: internet marketing

Velocity is such a potent argument. Why dont we use it more, for Christs sake?

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I am re-reading a 2007 scientific article from Region Focus’ Vanessa Sumo:

– Ask The Market – Companies are leading the way in the use of prediction markets. The public sector may soon follow. – (PDF)

Here is what I see on the frontpage:

– &#8220-one or two weeks in advance&#8220-

– &#8220-even up to five weeks in advance&#8220-

Marketing-wise, velocity is a much more potent argument than the argument on accuracy. Who cares about an added accuracy of +2.7% (and that&#8217-s debated)? If any, that&#8217-s peanuts.

You cannot make a case against velocity. Impossible.

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UPDATE: Put the PDF link in the address box of your browser (as opposed to clicking on it, or right-clicking on it).

http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2007/spring/pdf/feature1.pdf

BuddyPress will power the communities of our prediction exchanges.

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BuddyPress, part of the WordPress eco-system.

More on BuddyPress.

Download this post to watch the video, if you read this in a feed reader (such as Google Reader).

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Possible users of BuddyPress:

– BetFair – TradeFair

– InTrade – TradeSports

– HedgeStreet

– Betdaq

– Hollywood Stock Exchange – Cantor Exchange

– HubDub

– NewsFutures

– Inkling Markets

– etc.

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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).

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Loic Le Meur:

[…]

#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&#8217-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, &#8220-Nigel Eccles read that post months before I did.&#8221- :-D

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The one thing I enjoy every Monday morning

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As a prediction market aficionado, what lights me up are stories about&#8230- (of course)&#8230- how the prediction markets are assessing important news. The HubDub blog publishes, every Monday morning, a post that rounds up the 5 most prominent (that&#8217-s subjective) news stories of the week, with the prediction market charts, so we can spot which outcome is the more likely, for each issue.

I find this weekly newsletter addictive. I read it with attention each Monday. It is simple, short, but well done and effective.

I wish InTrade, BetFair, and NewsFutures would publish such a prediction market blog.

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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.

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These traders are talking down the newly redesigned Hollywood Stock Exchange website.

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[They guy above has misspelled, two times. He meant: “unusable“.]

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Previously: #1 – #2 – #3 – #4

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UPDATE: Traders talk on Twitter about HSX.

Thanks to the HubDub guy for the tip.

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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.

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[*] 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.

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InTrade has surpassed BetFair and TradeSports (and the Iowa Electronic Markets, too).

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InTrade&#8217-s PageRank is now 7 / 10 &#8212-while all the other major prediction market firms are at 6 / 10.

  1. It shows that the prediction market approach is paying off. Do provide journalist-friendly objective probabilistic predictions (expressed in percentages &#8211-not those fucking decimal odds), and the media will link to you, thanks to all the free-market economists who love your model and act as unpaid publicists for you. Make sure your website can resist under heavy traffic loads on Election Day, and during the occasional days where important news break. Then, milk out all this free publicity. Run registration ads allover your exchange website to attract new traders. Make money. Invest in IT &#8212-but don&#8217-t let the IT maniacs complicate your prediction exchange too much (as BetFair did).
  2. Long-term, the InTrade model (based on the prediction market approach) should be more profitable, in theory. Because of legal impediment, InTrade is not as profitable as it should be, alas.