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September 06, 2005

Buzz Game's Back Baby

The Tech Buzz Game is back to test your mad prediction skillz for a second round. But first, many congratulations are in order to Rahulkul, Farmersckn and Zex, our first-round prize winners (subject to final verification), who walk away collectively with an Apple Mac Mini, Ipod, Ipod Shuffle, O'Reilly vouchers, and other swag, including the (not so) highly-coveted "I'm a Buzz Market Maven" t-shirt.

Round 2 features a number of new stocks, including Google Earth, iRobot Scooba, the decidedly droolworthy Kaleidescape, and a mini-concentration in open source technologies, including open source databases, licensing, and GUI toolkits.

If you're not familiar with the Tech Buzz Game, it's a fantasy prediction market for technology. Your goal is to predict what technologies people will be searching the web for in the future. You put your (fantasy) money where your mouth is by buying stock in the technologies you believe will be popular and selling stock in the technologies you think will flop.

Even if you never trade a single stock, the Buzz Game can be useful for tracking technology trends. For example, you can witness the rise of Google Maps, Ubuntu, and Ruby on Rails.You can even see that Gnutella/Limewire is the P2P system on the march, not BitTorrent. You can track your favorite stocks via the REST API.

The Tech Buzz Game is a joint effort between Yahoo! Research and O'Reilly Media. Markets in the game reflect a mix of companies, products, and technologies on O'Reilly's radar.

The game has two research goals: (1) to test whether the "wisdom of crowds" can foresee technology trends; and (2) to test out Yahoo! Research's new dynamic parimutuel exchange mechanism.

Registration is now open. Good luck and happy trading.

David Pennock & Bernard Mangold
Yahoo! Research

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Comments

In a fantasy game where real investment is not at stake, people are prone to experiment and be adventurous. Even if crowds can forsee tech trends, they wont necessarily invest in stocks/markets that are bound to grow. They'd rather invest in stocks that will return money immediately. A game that runs for 6 months is not a good indicator. Collective wisdom can not be tested in a market that can be easily manipulated by the richer shareholders. If points were given only for predicting trends and not for investing in a market, that would be a better indicator.

My two pennies, :-)

Posted by: An | September 7, 2005 03:16 PM

Hi,

I want to blog this tomorrow, so I'm just trying to clarify what these figures mean. You claim that Gnutella is the "P2P system on the march", but BitTorrent is the highest valued stock - surely this suggests that BitTorrent simply hasn't reached the mainstream yet. As I see it, if the highest valued stock is not the product generating the most buzz, this simply means that it is yet to flourish (ie it has not gone mainstream yet). Perhaps you could clarify how these figures should be interpreted?

I think the Tech Buzz Game is fascinating and I think it's commendable that you're trying out the wisdom of crowds theory. As your last commenter pointed out, it's difficult to emulate perfectly the system that Surowiecki proposes, but I still believe this project will deliver some remarkable results.

As a tech investor, I'd love to see Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft go head to head in the buzz game, but I can't seem to see them listed. I'm sure there's a good reason for this.

I also think that getting information out of this system is crucial. I see you have an API - any chance of RSS feeds?

PS. Keep up the great work :)

Posted by: Pete Cashmore | September 7, 2005 03:41 PM

this stuff is great!

Posted by: Solynna | September 9, 2005 01:32 PM

Sorry, Jerry, but this has to be off topic: I've been reading how Yahoo has helped imprison a journalist fighting for civil liberties in communist China. Saturday you said it was the law there and "Yahoo" (ie, you and its other directors since "Yahoo" isn't a person with a free will) had to comply with the law in communist China. Well, Jerry, that's a lot of horse shit. Nobody has to just roll over and hurt people, not for a bloody nickel. If you're going to help screw good people over and hide behind "just following orders", then I hope the whole world finds out, stops, thinks about it, and tells "Yahoo" no thanks. Make amends, apologize, work to release this guy, criticize China, and have some balls in the future.

Posted by: Scott McMasters | September 10, 2005 07:31 PM

This is great, but what happened to the Social Bookmarks market? I'm a big Simpy fan, and Simpy was doing well in the previous encarnation of Buzz Game. Please get Simpy in there.

Posted by: Mark | September 13, 2005 03:07 PM

What Mark said above - please add Simpy. Simpy is an excellent social bookmarking service, and is much like Yahoo's MyWeb. If you have 'FEEDME' (Feed me links?), I don't get why you don't have Simpy (and Furl, for example).

Posted by: Timothy | September 15, 2005 07:04 PM

What Scott McMasters said about Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft, i would love to see that as well

Posted by: pete | January 8, 2007 03:22 AM