- September 18, 2007
- 1 comment
Prediction markets are fascinating. They exploit the wisdom of crowds to predict what may happen next.
And often, they work scarily well, predicting such things as presidential elections and movie hits.
I ran into Donna Hoffman and Tom Novak at the Shop.org opening reception last night.
We had a really interesting conversation about their newest project at the eLab at UC Riverside: the eLab eXchange, which just launched. They got some nice coverage in yesterday’s NY Times.
Donna and Tom hope the wisdom of crowds can predict where online retail is heading.
You can set up a free account at eLab eXchange and then offer your opinions on (among other things) Holiday ‘07 sales, popular Holiday ‘07 online promotions, and the future of YouTube.
If your predictions are good, you win “bragging rights” and maybe even cash and “cool prizes”.
Myself, I put all my tokens on “free shipping” as the big promotion this holiday.
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We’re having some fun with online shopping this holiday season in the eLab eXchange.
We just launched several prediction markets designed to test consumers’ skill at predicting the likelihood of some closely watched online holiday shopping stats. All these markets will be judged using data from Nielsen Online in early 2008.
If you have a moment, come over for a visit and try your hand at judging these events. We’ve already declared winners - and sent off Amazon gift certificates - in three previous markets (Google/YouTube, Social Shopping and Virtual Worlds) and we plan to give away the $500 mega-prize early in the new year - it could be you, but only if you play.
Online Holiday Sales Growth
Most Popular Holiday Online Shopping Day
Most Popular Consumer Electronics Online Retailer
Most Successful Online Holiday Promotions