Just how smart are America's political, social,and technology pundits? The free, news predication game Hubdub now exposes on PunditWatch whether a select 10 commentators - from MSNBC's Chris Matthews to the six tech journalists blogging for VentureBeat - really know what they are talking about.
Looking for another way to engage its target audience - college-educated, American males who are early adopters -the U.K. company Hubdub Ltd.,(DEMO 08) decided to score pundits' predictions for a month and now challenges its growing audience to pit themselves against public pundits' continuous stream of predictions. The initial 10 pundits are individuals and co-written blogs:
Politics: Chris Matthews of MSNBC, Pat Buchanan of MSNBC and NBC,and David Brooks of the Public Broadcast System and The New York Times;
Entertainment: celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily, DListed's entertainment blog Michael K;
Sports: Peter King, senior writer for Sports Illustrated; and
Technology: VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch.
"There were plenty more we wanted to add, but after exhaustive investigation we found that they don't ever in fact make any real testable predictions.
We do, however, plan to add a second wave of pundits to this list," blogged Hubdub Ltd. founder and CEO Nigel Eccles when seeking readers' recommendations for other public pundits to track.
Prediction tools are being used by companies like Google and Lockheed to refine products and strategies. Some major universities like Columbia University and Fortune 1000 companies have turned to companies like Fluid Innovation, Inc. (DEMOfall 07) and Consensus Point for predication tools to figure out which patents to renew or which skunk works project to turn into a real product.Prediction markets are showing up on gaming and news sites like IDG's The Industry Standard (IDG also owns DEMO), BluBet, Zoomabet, and News Futures as an attempt to engage readers.
"Predictions make people even more engaged in topics," Eccles said in an interview. "It moves people from having an interest to eagerly anticipating what's going on."
Hubdub grew in part out of Eccles' fascination with world news and American politics. "My motivation for PunditWatch is personal. I am suspicious that some journalists are less than stellar at their forecasts, and I wanted to actually find out and track whether these people are really good analysts and explore how much does that matter," Eccles said. Huddub is testing the theory: "No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, seers will find suckers."
During the first stealth month of tracking pundits, Hubdub learned that Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider predicted Google could hit US$2,000 a share just as its share price peaked and slid to less than $500. TechCrunch made 10 predictions in May (of which two were settled) and landed at the bottom of Hubdub's score card because it got the two settled ones wrong. The settled predictions were"Will Microsoft make another offer for Yahoo by the end of May?" and"Will Yahoo and Microsoft announce a search deal by the end of May?" Neither happened.
Hubdub set up shadow accounts for 10 pundits and every Monday posts all their previous week's predictions to look at performance and ask readers to dig out new predictions as well as weighin on pundits' predictions. Each prediction earns a pundit a value -H$10 - once the prediction is settled, value can be debited from their account. Readers get involved in setting values for some predictions and challenging public pundits.
Pundits can make anything from zero to three predictions a week. If they make more than three, Hubdub ignores the later ones. Pundits be aware - reporting of rumors will be treated as predictions. "If they don't think the rumors are likely to be true then why report them? " Eccles blogged.
"I'm not sure if PunditWatch will be a traffic generator but it felt like an obvious thing to do to explain how Hubdub works and the power of what it can do," Eccles said. One outcome he expects is even more
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