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UPDATE: Yesterday’s prediction market video is now on YouTube! »

Explaining Prediction Markets to a “newbie” (video!)

September 4th, 2007

Prediction markets truly harness the “Wisdom of Crowds,” but not that many people really know what they are. They understand the two words individually, but they don’t necessarily “get it.”

I decided to set myself a little bit of a challenge; to create a short video that explained the key concepts of prediction markets in three minutes or less. It took a while to really distill the ideas down to the core, and some of you may criticise that I’ve glossed over some details. But I hope the video below is something that busy executives can take the time to watch and understand. (I’ve created a separate page for it that you will also see on the right-hand sidebar.)

I look forward to reading your comments! (And if you like it, please Digg it!)

RSS readers – if you can’t see the video, please click through to the post on Mercury’s Blog.

UPDATE: Video is now via YouTube.

Cross-posted at Midas Oracle.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 12:46 pm and is filed under General, Videos.

  • Hello, Bruce.

    Thanks for your comments. When it comes to putting presentations/explainers up on YouTube, I defaulted to presentation software because it's straightforward, and I wasn't going to video myself as a talking head. If it's "fundamentally flawed" what else would you suggest?

    I certainly agree that I could work on getting some of the visuals to match up better; my background is as an engineer, not a graphic designer!

    Again, thanks for the comments.
  • Pretty solid work--you imparted a clear, concise understanding of prediction markets. Further, as a person who is in the process of learning about these markets, I found your presentation informative, interesting, and fairly compelling. I only have a few critiques:

    First, there really isn't any apparent reason to mention The Wisdom of Crowds at the beginning of your presentation, and it distracts from your point.

    Second, the power-point presentation method is used to its best advantage here, but it is still a fundamentally flawed means of conveying information. This means that there are times, such as when you put up a header reading "Web 2.0" that your visuals not only don't support your point, but actually distract from it. I would work on streamlining your message a little bit. To put it another way, if something doesn't directly help you to communicate your message, then it actively hurts it.

    Third, I might try to record your voice-over in shorter bursts, as it would make it easier to fix sections when you get a little tongue-tied.
  • jheuristic
    Hi -- Be good to post in YouTube. -j

    http://tinyurl.com/33mdy4
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