Monthly Archives: January 2008

commentary, fun, prediction markets

The proverbial wisdom of crowds

3 Comments

I am fascinated by thingnaming.

In some ways there is no more straightforward way to certify your influence on the world than to count the number of times people use a word or phrase you invented.

On this count, James Surowiecki is a champion.1 His catch phrase the wisdom of crowds — a brilliant feat of thingnaming — has in four short years spread to over 2.1 million nooks and crannies around the web.2

In fact, BusinessWeek reporter Jennifer L. Schenker recently termed it the “proverbial wisdom of the crowd”. [Finding faces in the e-crowd, Businessweek, Dec 24, 2007, p.70]

At first I meant to poke fun at Schenker for attributing this adjective associated with adages of ancient origin to a four-year-old artifact.

However, digging further, I noticed that Schenker is right. Another use of the word proverbial is “having become an object of common mention or reference”, for example “your proverbial inability to get anywhere on time”.

Interestingly, a pun on Surowiecki’s phrase appears in the same issue of BusinessWeek. Stephen Baker’s long (yet remarkably content-free) piece on cloud computing is titled Google and the wisdom of clouds.

It’s amazing how crucial a good thingname can be to the success of a thing. Thanks James!

1Of course, beyond thingnaming, Surowiecki wrote a fantastic book that helped catalyze an industry, among his other plentiful contributions and accomplishments.
2For examples of unsuccessful thingnaming look here and here.
economics, finance, prediction markets, search, yahoo

Search engine futures!

6 Comments

I am happy to report that on my suggestion intrade has listed futures contracts for 2008 search engine market share.

Here is how they work:

A contract will expire according to the percentage share of internet searches conducted in the United States in 2008. For example, if 53.5% of searches conducted in the United States in 2008 are made using Google then the contract listed for Google will expire at 53.5…

…Expiry will be based on the United States search share rankings published by Nielson Online.

I think this could be a fascinating market because:

  • Search engine market share is very important to these major companies, with dramatic effects on their share prices.
  • Search engine market share is fluid, so far with Google growing inexorably. However, Microsoft has cash, determination, Internet Explorer, and the willingness to experiment. Ask.com has erasers, 3D, ad budgets, and The Algorithm. Yahoo!, second in market share, often tests equal or better than Google, and new features like Search Assist are impressive.
  • The media loves to write about it.
  • A major search company might use the market to hedge. Well, this seems far-fetched but you never know. Certainly, from an economic risk management standpoint it would seem to make a great deal of sense. (Here, as always on this blog, I speak on behalf of myself and not my company.)

Finally, I have to comment on how refreshingly easy the process was in working with intrade. They went from suggestion to implementation in a matter of days. It’s a shame that US-based companies are in contrast stuck in stultifying legal and regulatory mud.

Addendum 2008/01/26: Here are links to some market research reports:
Nielsen | ComScore | HitWise | Compete

(It seems that Nielsen Netratings homepage is down; getting 404 error at the moment)

Addendum 2008/03/07: If you prefer, you can now also bet on search share just for fun with virtual currency at play.intrade.com.

(Nielsen Netratings homepage is still down, now for over a month. It’s even more ridiculous given that their own Nielsen Online website points to this page.)

commentary

1 year is more than 1% of your life

2 Comments

“No duh,” you might say.

Or, “no it’s not,” you might say.

Still, I find it a powerful thought. One year seems like almost nothing — it can pass in a flash. I’ve procrastinated many projects and reunions well past one year without blinking. Yet 1% of a life seems monstrous. Thinking of a year in this way seems to put it in perspective.

Coming soon: 3.65 days is 1% of a year…
53 minutes is…

advertising, economics, events, prediction markets, research

FYI 2 CFPs: WWW2008-IM & ACM EC'08

Here are two Call For P*s for upcoming academic/research conferences:

  1. Call for Participation: For the first time, the World Wide Web Conference has a track on Internet Monetization, including topics in electronic commerce and online advertising. The conference will be held in Beijing April 21-25, 2008. If the Olympics in China are all about image, then the Internet in China is all about, well, Monetization. (A lot of it, growing fast.)

  2. Call for Papers: The 2008 ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce will be held in Chicago July 8-12, 2008 in proximity to AAAI-08 and GAMES 2008. Research papers on all aspects of electronic commerce — including personal favorites prediction markets and online advertising — are due February 7, 2008.

You can signal your interest on social events calendar upcoming.org: WWW2008 | EC’08

Hope to see some of you in either the Forbidden or Windy City, as the case may be.