Over the past couple of weeks I have been speaking to lots of members of the Hubdub community. One thing that has come into the conversation a number of times is what is the vision for Hubdub? Where do we see ourselves in 5 years time? While history loves stories about the flash of inspiration or the single event that sparked an idea, in general I believe the process of innovation is much more messy than that. Hubdub was no different. Part of the idea goes back to my university days when I developed a fascination for game theory and gambling (pure and applied!). Then in 2000 I joined a start-up called flutter.com. Flutter’s original vision was to enable people to make person-to-person bets on anything that interested them. There were a number of problems with that vision, which I blogged about here, but we quickly changed course and were ultimately successfully acquired by Betfair. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Betfair, it is a betting exchange, like an eBay for sports betting.

While Betfair has been highly successful, there were two parts of their service that I was always surprised that they never developed in 7 years since I left. The first part was that they have one of the most active forums on the internet with people discussing everything from sports to celebrities to everything in between. However the forums have always been kept at arms length from the main betting exchange. The second part is that behind all these markets is an amazing set of data that clearly shows how news events like the US elections have evolved. Over the past 7 years I have used Betfair prices to follow news stories like that (and also who is next to get kicked out of Big Brother!). Unfortunately, unless you can read digital odds and you can navigate their interface you won’t be able to get the same benefit.

The second last element behind the Hubdub concept was an exceptionally bad stock portfolio I had from 2005 to 2007. I had spent weeks and months of my free time working out PE ratios, momentum, free cash flow, debt ratios etc. I even bought a couple of Domino pizzas to check if their product was up to scratch (the pizzas were good but I passed on the stock). However, despite all my work my portfolio starting dropping from day one. Owning Sportingbet shares when the US passed the Unlawful Internet Gaming Act didn’t help much either. However the thing that I discovered was (a) how frequently I checked my portfolio (er, every other minute when things were quiet) and (b) that all the information I wanted to know was boiled into the price. Only if was there a significant price movement did I dig into see if there was a significant news event. This made me realize that if I could place bets on future events and news stories I was interested in then I could let the system ping me when something significant had happened (however I would probably still want to check my portfolio every 15 minutes!)

The last thing that pushed me over the edge to starting Hubdub was working in the news industry I had found that newspapers on-line had been really successful at reaching out to millions of readers. However while they could reach millions of readers those readers weren’t hanging around for very long. For example the Guardian is one of the biggest UK on-line newspaper sites with around 20 million monthly unique visitors. However each of those visitors only views about 11 pages on average per month. That made me realize that if we could build something which combined the reach of news with the engagement and excitement of a betting exchange then that would be really something. Thus Hubdub the idea was born on July 23rd, 2007, exactly one year today.

*A lot* has happened in that past year with the help of a fantastic team who have taken an idea and made it their own. In many ways Hubdub looks nothing like the mock-ups we threw together last summer. Some things we tried never really panned out the way we expected (did anyone ever vote a news story up or down?!) but the great thing is that the idea core to the concept, that people would find the idea of trading predictions around news stories and future events highly addictive. Even more exciting is that many of our original ideas we still haven’t had the chance to try out.

All that is just the pre-amble to let me put off trying to describe what my vision is for Hubdub in 5 years time. The Hubdub concept has evolved over the past 12 months as it has gone from one person owning it to thousands of people owning it. That makes it tough to lay out a vision so here is my best shot:

In 5 years time, Hubdub is the market platform for any and all future events of public interest; where millions of users actively trade tens of thousands of stories and future events. Streaming out of those public markets is data on:
- Forecast probabilities of the likelihood of future events
- Peoples’ individual views of the future, which they share and discuss with friends
- Peoples’ reputations for accurately analyzing and forecasting future events
- A filter of news stories that have a significant impact on peoples’ outlook on the future (that is, only newsworthy stories)
Hubdub would be the exchange for this activity with both predictions flowing in and data flowing out via partner sites, distributed functionality and third party apps. Quoting Hubdub forecasts in news stories about future events will be as common as quoting stock prices in financial stories is today or (in the UK) quoting betting odds for political elections.

Tim O’Reilly recently wrote about the success of web 2.0 applications but asked question “But what good is collective intelligence if it doesn’t make us smarter?”. I truly believe that achieving the above goal would go a long way in answering that question. I would love to know your thoughts.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Hubdub is growing and we need your help! So we’re looking to hire a number of passionate Hubdubbers to join our Admin team. If you know anything about Hubdub, you’ll realise that we can’t offer you an earth-shatteringly good benefits package, but what we can offer is the opportunity to:

• Have fun working with a small committed team
• Learn first hand how a high-growth internet start-up is built (we’re still learning)
• Experience building an exciting web destination and passionate community
• Be paid (a little!) doing something you love in your own time

More details on our jobs page.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Image via WikipediaAs you may have noticed, we have carried on working on the tagging system, putting lots of pretty tag clouds all over place. I hope you’re finding this useful - all feedback welcome as ever.

We don’t use these tags for news gathering any more, so there is no longer any need to type contorted and repetitive phrases to try and find news articles

Just a couple of other tips for question creators, so that we minimize duplicate tags:

• The best tags autocomplete when you start typing - we like these tags best because we know they already exist
• Tag the country in the world section (except in UK, where we already know it)
• Tag the league or competition in sport (unless there’s actually a subcat for it, eg. MLB). ‘English Premier League’, ‘Bundesliga’ and ‘Wimbledon’ are good tags. Also try to tag the team/teams (’toronto blue jays’, ‘fulham fc’, ‘ny mets’, ‘la galaxy’ are good examples)
• Don’t put in a tag that means the same as the category or subcategory (eg, there is no need for ‘us election 08′ or similar on a question when that is the subcategory. Same for ‘mlb’/'major league baseball’ etc.
• We prefer full names for people, eg Barack Obama rather than Obama, and Didier Drogba instead of Drogba. Dubya is ‘George W Bush’, and I don’t think anybody has ever mentioned his dad on the site anyway
• Avoid plurals ‘republican’ is better than ‘republicans’

Hope you enjoy anyway

Chris

Popularity: 3% [?]

We are really excited to announce that we have just integrated with Twitter. What that means is that when you make a prediction on Hubdub you can then immediately drop it into your Twitter stream. Additionally, you can opt to save your Twitter log in details and either tweet all your predictions or just selectively tweet them.

Here is the first ever Hubdub prediction tweet:

You can follow me on Twitter here. Get tweeting those predictions!

Popularity: 3% [?]

By Ryan Jacobs (Politics Category Editor)

For months we’ve watched the Democratic nomination drudgingly soldier on. Now though the light at the end of the tunnel has finally appeared. As we near the end of the nominating process lets analyze what got us to this point.

At the end of April it still seemed like the fight between Clinton and Obama was a competition. McCain although out in the GOP wilderness was building his machine and raising funds. But as April turned into May a momentous shift occurred showcased by the market chart above. Around May 6-7th the entire Who will be the next President market shifted.

Clinton’s price began a slow but steady downwards slope and this price decrease boosted Obama’s standing, leading him to break free from McCain and soar ahead. Despite fallout from Reverend Wright and other political gaffes Obama’s been able to not only maintain a lead in the markets but build on it.

Oddly, the Gallup polls show a close general election race between Obama and McCain, but the markets which are asking the same question have very different results. They show what seems to be a knockout win for Obama in November. The question is why is this happening? It’s possible that Gallup responders are tinged more by ideology and don’t just take into consideration the facts but also predict who they want to be the next President. Prediction markets users don’t predict who they hope will be the next President, there predictions are based almost solely on cold hard calculations of who will be the next President. This is because they want the large payoff from predicting correct.

So what events or event caused the sudden change in the markets? If we track this back to the primaries, 2 come to mind, the May 6th Indiana and North Carolina primaries. After these as seen through the market Obama began his quick ascension, while Clinton and McCain both faltered.

So why did McCain and Clinton both falter after Indiana and North Carolina? Well, Obama won Carolina with large margins and was able to keep Clinton’s win in Indiana small, therefore he was finally able to shut her down. With Clinton all but officially done Obama could now focus on McCain. As Obama focused on McCain it became clearer and clearer who of the two was the front runner for the Presidential election and the market adjusted for this showcased by McCain’s slow downturn and Obama’s rapid ascent.

Obama now holds a major lead in the markets and once Clinton is officially gone I’d predict Obama’s price will inflate once again. The problem is when will the downturn happen? Obama can’t fly like this forever and soon enough the GOP will begin to mercilessly attack. The election this year won’t be a blowout for Obama and soon enough the markets will adjust to this, the question is when?

what is this?

Who will be the next President of the U.S.?

% chance over time

    John McCain

    Mike Huckabee

    Ron Paul

    Ralph Nader

    Mike Bloomberg

    Hillary Clinton

    Barack Obama

    Other

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 5% [?]

Earlier this week we put the finishing touches to a great set of widgets. There are two types of widget:

Market widget

The first type of widget is a market widget which records the the changes in prices in that market over time. If you post this widget to your blog then Hubdub will automatically provide a trackback from the market page to your blog post. If, for example, you were writing about the twists and turns of the on-off Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo then you might want to embed this widget:

what is this?

Who will buy Yahoo?

% chance over time

    Microsoft

    News Corp

    Viacom

    Time Warner

    Other public company

    Private equity

    Still independent by end of ‘08

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Or maybe you wanted to show how Obama has consolidated his grip on the Democratic nomination:

what is this?

Who will the 2008 Democratic candidate for President be?

% chance over time

    Barack Obama

    Hillary Clinton

    John Edwards

    Someone else

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Or maybe you just wanted to show which of Howard Stern’s Bowling Beauties the market is currently in love with:

what is this?

Who will win Howard Stern’s ‘Bowling Beauties’ contest?

% chance over time

    Justine Joli

    Jackie

    Savanna

    Phyllicia

    Tracy

    Gina Lynn

    Leticia

    Kayla

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

To access this type of widget click on the ‘Get widget’ link on the question page.

Prediction widget

Want to tell the world your prediction and record it for posterity? Then you need the prediction widget. This widget (which is a bit like a betting slip) shows what you predicted and when.

Maybe you predicted in mid-April when Obama was having priest issues and Mugabe had just lost an election, that Mugabe would still outlast Clinton:

Who’ll last longer, Robert Mugabe or Hillary Clinton?

I predicted Mugabe   on 13th Apr 08

what is this?

The News Prediction Game

Or maybe you predicted that the 3G iPhone will launch in the second half of June. Actually best not mention that one now everyone knows it will be the first half of June. Oh well, here it is:

When will Apple officially announce the 3G iPhone? [dates rumored]

I predicted June 15th to 30th   on 12th May 08

what is this?

The News Prediction Game

To access this widget click on the widget icon beside your prediction on your My Hubdub page.

Widget, widgets everywhere

The widgets come in both 250 pixel wide and 400 pixel wide versions and you can post them to your blog or to your favorite social networking profile. Have fun widgeting!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Think you know your shouts from your voids. Then you might want to try out the Hubdub Quiz.  Worryingly I think I would only chalk up a 7…

(Created by Rohan)

Popularity: 2% [?]

By Donal (Sports Editor)

Reports that Federal prosecutors have unveiled a revamped indictment against Barry Bonds were a timely reminder that the home run leader still exists and is still unemployed.

Like I have said before, it saddens me that Bonds remains jobless. We are being deprived of a great story and the controversy/pantomime that a Bonds return would undoubtedly entail.

So what are the chances that I will get my wish and when is it likely to happen?

Before the All-star Break?

Will Barry Bonds be in the starting lineup of a MLB team before the All-Star break of the 2008 season?

Hubdub says “unlikely” with “No” at 70%. This percentage looks likely to trickle up over the next two months in the absence of any rumored interest in Bonds in the short term.

At any stage in 2008?

Will Barry Bonds play professional baseball in 2008?

This surprises me. Hubdub puts Bonds playing in the Major Leagues in 2008 at 55% as of May 15th. I would imagine that the logic underlying this percentage is that some contending team looking for offensive help will ignore the federal indictments and the distractions and offer Bonds a job.

But 50-50? I for one hope so, but at those odds, I’d opt for No.

Popularity: 2% [?]

By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)

Get Satisfaction is an amazing service for solving problems and communicating with your users. However sometimes I think we have a different class of problem to other sites…

Will the USA suffer another terrorist attack on their homeland before the end of the 2008 election?

Popularity: 3% [?]

By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)

The United States Military Academy’s Department of Mathematical Science runs a weekly Problem of the Week. Last week was a really interesting problem involving making predictions on Hubdub! Unfortunately the deadline is now closed for entries however kudos to the first commentator who posts the correct answer below.

Hat tip to jenniandboys.

Popularity: 3% [?]