They say things come in threes - and we’ve picked up three websites who have made big changes to their websites in the past couple of days…

Propeller, Netscape’s social media site, has radically overhauled its interface … apparently, to catch the 3 to 5 demographic! They have enlarged their font size radically which reduces the amount of stories visible on the front page; changed the colours to bright primary ones; and added a big cartoon mascot! Some of the most user-unfriendly changes I’ve noticed are an increasing number of click-throughs on an already slow-loading site; ‘help’ links being far more prominent than the links you are actually trying to get ‘help’ for (eg multiple times when I was trying to view a specific group, my first view was the general help topic on ‘how to view’); and baffling help topics - for example, the site had an explanation of what a ‘url’ was on their submit page, just in case anybody finding themselves trying to submit a story on this social media site didn’t know!

Not surprisingly, the top propped articles for both days have been about how bad the changes are … the first one was removed, which has led to even more criticism of the site.

Another site close to Hubdub that has undergone some recent changes is Blubet. This site, which runs quizs and bets for virtual money, recently announced new items for sale at their BluBet Store - including real money tokens to buy their virtual currency. It seems there is some disgruntlement at the site selling out, and also not consulting with users before the changes were made, but I suppose the quiet ones are just continuing to play the site.

To round out the three, the Huffington Post has just launched its ‘Big News Pages‘ feature, where topics such as Obama, Amy Winehouse and Climate Change are given a unique page that aggregates all the blogs and stories specifically on that topic. We think we’ll be keeping an eye on the Technology one. This seems to have been the most popular change of the three - or perhaps the gushing comments are also attributable to giant crushes on Arianna herself.

Obviously, there is a fine line between refining a product for the better, and making radical changes without consulting the user base or at least explaining the rationale behind them. As always, we welcome comments on how you are finding Hubdub, and suggestions on changes you’d like to see!

Popularity: 4% [?]

The Firefox 3 browser launches today and they are aiming to exceed 5 million downloads in one day. Firefox 2 was downloaded 1.6 million times on the first day but this time they are aiming higher. VentureBeat has a great write up of it here.

You can follow progress on the downloads via Twitter. Download your copy at Mozilla.

Update: TechCrunch and Silicon Alley Insider are also covering this story although it looks like Mozilla have unleashed a massive DDOS attack on themselves. Still trying to access the download page…

what is this?

Will Firefox 3 Exceed 5 Million Downloads In One Day?

% chance over time

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’ve just bought and installed new anti-spam software. Here is a screenshot of my spam bin the first time I connected to the email server.

If they can’t figure their own activation email isn’t spam it isn’t looking good is it…

Popularity: 4% [?]

TechCrunch are reporting that a small bug in the PayPal payment system which is causing merchants to lose money has not been fixed for over 10 days. PayPal have acknowledged the bug in a blog post but not fixed it. TechCrunch reports:

It appears that they simply aren’t storing the value of the country when a user changes it, a very simple thing to change, perhaps a single line of code. In fact, it probably took them longer to write the blog post noting the bug than it would have taken to simply fix it. The most likely explanation for the ridiculous amount of time it has taken to fix it: it’s probably stuck in a bug queue, and has to wait its turn.

My personal experience with PayPal is that they excel in poor customer service. Their developer relations is so bad that developers I know who have had to integrate with PayPal come out in a rash if their name is brought up. This bug seems to have caused a lot of that anger to boil over with it being angrily discussed at Get Clicky, CenterNetworks and the PayPal Developer Community.

With this starting to become a major tech story one would expect the pressure will be on PayPal to fix this ASAP. The market is opening 80% that they get around it by the end of the week.

what is this?

How Long Will It Take PayPal To Fix The Drop Down Menu Bug?

% chance over time

    May 26

    May 27-28

    May 29-31

    June 1-6

    June 7 or later

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 5% [?]

If you want to keep up to date with what is happening at Hubdub HQ, new markets, stuff and trivia then follow me (Nigel Eccles) on Twitter.

Moving from the bottom of the leaderboard to the top with news that Leo Laporte has put 500 followers between himself and Kevin Rose. It is now trading at about 50/50 but I think the grey (Laporte) is going to pull it off. Offering to give a way a top end gaming PC to one of his followers at random seems to have done the trick!

what is this?

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

% chance over time

    Kevin Rose

    Leo Laporte

    Jason Calacanis

    Robert Scoble

    John C Dvorak

    Wil Harris

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 6% [?]

The early leader, Leo Laporte, is still way out in lead by just under 1,000 followers. So confident was he in his lead that he didn’t even mention Twitter in his weekly tech podcast. That complacency might cost him dear (well at least a Hubdub T-shirt!) as Kevin Rose is gunning for the top spot and he is willing to play dirty to get there. Last week he sent out a tweet saying he was going to give his old iPhone to one of his followers chosen by random.

Only a few more followers and Rose will have bested Obama and it will be man-o-man between Laporte and Rose. Also looking comfortable in the saddle is Jason Calacanis who has rocketed up to 4th position. Could his new Tesla sportscar give him the firepower he needs to catch them at the finish line? The cameraman is opening his bag for what looks like will be a thrilling finish!

Prediction markets

what is this?

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

% chance over time

    Kevin Rose

    Leo Laporte

    Jason Calacanis

    Robert Scoble

    John C Dvorak

    Wil Harris

Get this widget

Can you get it right? Make your prediction…

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Looking at the prediction markets now shows that punters have recognized Rose’s push up the field with them currently putting him at favorite with a 48% chance to win. Punters aren’t convinced that a late Calacanis surge is going to happen but a mystery punter has gone out on a limb and placed a stack on John C Dvorak. Dvorak looks like he has a mountain to climb but does someone out there know something we don’t?

Me? I’m putting my money down on Rose to pull ahead on the final furlong.

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

I predicted Kevin Rose   on last Friday

what is this? The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 6% [?]

The Inquisitr reports that traffic to Google owned sites have surpassed Yahoo for the first time. The data from ComScore shows that Google sites had a total of 141 million visitors compared to 140.6 million for Yahoo, with much of Google’s gain coming from YouTube.

Google have taken the beachhead

As Inquisitr points out when Google takes the lead in the market it generally consolidates it. Inquisitr is going to report the numbers next month. I’m opening the bidding that Google have a 60% chance of being ahead in May but I think our users will bid that up more. With the momentum that YouTube has it is hard to see how they could fall behind next month. Will Google still be ahead of Yahoo in May?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Recent analysis conducted for ReadWriteWeb has shown that the presence of Tech stories on Digg has halved every year for the past 3 years. They found the percentage of most popular stories that are Tech on the front page were:

1st Week in March 2006: 75.72%

1st Week in March 2007: 37.89%

1st Week in March 2008: 19.78%

Get over it, we’re mainstream now

The reason for the drop is pretty clear as Digg tries to make itself more mainstream, potentially in preparation for a sale. In last night’s town hall event Kevin and Jay pretty much seemed to be say “Get over it, we’re mainstream now”. So what will the percentage of tech stories in most popular be in March 2009 compared with March 2008? If the current rate of halving continues it will be around 9%. However, I don’t often see tech on the front page of Yahoo News so if that is the aspiration it could be even less.

Currently the forecast is around 12-18%, although some are forecasting a even steeper drop. What do you think, is there a future for tech stories in Digg?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Facebook’s 23 year old CTO, Adam D’Angelo, is leaving the company to “take time off” reports Kara Swisher of All Things D. As Mashable points out most of the other top execs at Facebook are of the class of circa-2004 with ex-Googlers Gideon Yo as CFO and Sheryl Sandberg as COO.

The question remains as to whether this strengthens Zuckerberg’s control on the company or weakens it? Currently, Hubdub is forecasting he has a 83% chance of still being CEO of Facebook at the end of this year. That chance dipped at the end of February when rumors emerged of Facebook wanting to make management changes but it quite quickly recovered to its current level.

If Facebook want to IPO in 2009 then they will want to get these management changes through as early this year as possible. Would they seriously want to IPO with Zuckerberg at the helm? Will Zuckerberg still be CEO at the end of 2008?

Also covering the story are Silicon Alley Insider, VentureBeat and Inquisitr (Duncan Riley’s truly excellent new blog).

Popularity: 3% [?]

The Pirate Bay, the web’s premier BitTorrent tracker, is being hit with another suit from the MPAA demanding $15.4 million to cover the damages they suffered from 4 movies and 13 TV-episodes that were made available via TPB.

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde (Brokep) was pretty non-plussed by the claim: “They know they are losing, and try to make us look like big criminals by adding some zeros to a claim for a made-up crime.”

“The worst thing is that I lost 100 kronor on a bet on the number they would come up with,” Sunde added. “And, it sucks that they didn’t claim more than for Napster and the other sites. It’s cooler to break the record.”

TorrentSpy, a competing torrent search engine, shuttered earlier this year and has just been hit with a $110 million fine handed down by a LA Federal Court. The Pirate Bay, which on April 1st relocated to the Sinai desert, claims it is protected under Swedish law. However, MPAA isn’t giving up. Could this be the end of Pirate Bay?

Popularity: 2% [?]