We’re delighted to be able to offer our UK Hubdubbers their very own UK Edition of Hubdub. Now Hubdubbers based in the UK can now see news stories that other UK users are predicting on, simply by selecting the UK Edition at the top right of the home page.

Interestingly, the US site’s most popular stories today are all around the Presidential Inauguration and Obama’s cabinent appointments, while the UK site’s top listings are X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and Everton v Middlesborough. What does this say about the UK, I wonder? 

Here is the press release that we issued today in the UK:

Edinburgh, 10 November 2008: News junkies in the UK can now get an additional fix, by predicting the outcome of news stories – engaging in news stories instead of just reading them.

Users of Hubdub, which launches in the UK today, use a pot of virtual money to place bets on the outcome of any of over 2000 running news stories, covering the likes of politics, sport, business and entertainment.

Since launching earlier this year in the US, Edinburgh-based Hubdub has garnered a substantial and loyal following, with over 200,000 unique visitors per month, 800,000 predictions to date and over 2 million Hubdub dollars staked every day. Some users are spending several hours a day on the site, with many of them confessing to a definite Hubdub “addiction” on the site’s forum.

The fact that it’s Hubdub dollars at stake is apparently irrelevant – Hubdub users are so competitive that the most important thing is that they prove they were right to the rest of the vibrant community. How much is won or lost depends on not only how the news story turns out, but how others have predicted the outcome. Groups of friends can set up their own, dedicated leaderboard to show who has predicted most accurately.

Globally, prediction markets, the mechanism behind Hubdub, are becoming increasingly popular. In the US, the Presidential election sent the numbers of users soaring. They have proven to be more accurate than polls, and because they respond in near real-time to developing stories, more agile too. Indeed, Hubdub successfully predicted the final voting results of the US election where the majority of polls and pundits failed.

Lesley Eccles, one of the founders of Hubdub, commented: “It’s great to be launching in the UK, despite the recession. People are going to be looking for free entertainment and will turn to the web to find it. Hubdub is free, exciting and keeps you informed. In addition, news sites are looking to engage and interact further with their readers and Hubdub gives them a fantastic means to do so.”

Having secured partnerships with leading media news sites including Reuters and The Independent, Hubdub is taking prediction markets more mainstream and making them easier for casual browsers to appreciate. Sitting beside high quality news content, Hubdub provides news sites with additional ways to engage their readers, keeping them online longer and returning on a regular basis.

Current UK Markets include:
• Where will Russell Brand next get a full-time job?
• When will the next breach of confidential data occur?
• Who will win Strictly Come Dancing?
• All the games, goals and scorers in the English and Scottish football season

Popularity: 5% [?]

US Elections: The Best of the Rest of the Web

Hubdub: the just-for-fun news prediction site is carrying an election forecast map, which it claims is based on ‘51 underlying prediction markets that respond in real-time to breaking news’. Users can view forecasts state-by-state to help them decided where to place their Hubdub dollars when predicting the outcome of questions such as ‘Who will win the 2008 US Presidential Election?’ and ‘What will be the margin of victory in the state of Ohio?’ More…

How the US Election is playing out online

From FiveThirtyEight.com to Hubdub, it looks like the polls and prediction markets are forecasting the same thing: Come January 2009, we’ll be referring to Barack Obama as Mr. President. More…

The Independent lets Users Make the News

The Independent has announced a partnership with a new prediction website to allow their users to predict the outcomes of news stories. The prediction site, www.hubdub.com, allows users to trade predictions with virtual money on the outcomes of breaking news stories and future events, with approximately 2 million Hubdub dollars traded daily. More…

Online Election Headquarters

A popular prediction website, HubDub , is already predicting the winner for Tuesday’s presidential election. The prediction site allows users to make their personal predictions in categories from politics, music, and finances to a large section for sports. More…

Popularity: 4% [?]

Image via WikipediaWe are pleased to announce our new partnership with the UK Independent, one of the UK’s most innovative national newspapers. The Independent successfully relaunched independent.co.uk earlier this year improving user interaction through blogs and forums. We are now adding predictions to that mix.

Press release:

The Independent lets users make the news

The Independent has just partnered with a new prediction website to allow their users to predict the outcomes of news stories.

The prediction site, Hubdub, allows users to trade predictions with virtual money on the outcomes of breaking news stories and future events, with approximately 2 million Hubdub dollars traded daily. As part of a new, dedicated section within the site, The Independent generates questions for users to trade on based on the latest breaking news, ranging in topics from the current credit crunch to football to politics.

Additional tools and resources are also included to help build a community for The Independent within the site, http://www.hubdub.com/partners/theindependent. These include a “friends” application, comment capabilities, links to the top Independent stories of the day and widgets which are embedded in The Independent’s own website.

Finally, because Hubdub prediction markets aggregate thousands of trades, the site often produces accurate forecasts on the likelihood of future events. Beyond weighing in on the outcome, users are able to reference the site for up-to-the-minute information on the public’s predictions about breaking news from The Independent.

Jimmy Leach, editorial director for digital at the Independent said: ‘It’s a tremendously exciting partnership we’re beginning, enabling our millions of news junkie users to predict the outcome of both the serious and the trivial. There’s a tremendous fit between our audience and the addictive functionality of Hubdub and we’re looking forward to expanding the offering in the next few months.’

Examples of The Independent’s questions on Hubdub:
• Will UK inflation hit 6% this year?
• Will house prices continue to fall until the end of the year?
• Will Scotland be given the 2012 European Championships?
• Will Kevin Keegan be Newcastle manager by the end of the month?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Beyond Blogs - Succeeding in a Conversational Marketing World

People are tuning out companies and their marketing messages and tuning into one another using vast new social media options that pop up every day, from Wikis, blogs, and communities to social networks, Twitter, You Tube, HubDub and Digg. More…

Predict the News with Miller-McCune.com

Think you know what the future holds? Play along with us in our just launched news predictions game.

More…

Popularity: 4% [?]

Reuters Gives Up on News (Sept 23rd 2008)

ANCIENT NEWS OUTFIT Reuters has given up on working out news based on facts and will ask the virtual prediction site, Hubdub what will happen instead. Hubdub, which launched in February 2008, has created a special section of the site, dedicated solely to Reuters. It means that Reuters will be able to question Hubdub’s existing 150,000 users on what they think will be the outcome to current affairs questions. More…

Hubdub Founder Says Reuters Partnership is First of Many (Sept 22nd 2008)

Hubdub, the virtual prediction site, which launched in February 2008, has created a special section of the site, dedicated solely to Reuters. Reuters will be able to question Hubdub’s existing 150,000 users on what they think will be the outcome to current affairs questions. More…

Fall TV Death Watch (Sept 23rd 2008)

To help you avoid wasting time on this season’s “The Nine” , news prediction website Hubdub has a market going on which show will get axed first. You can see the betting below and place your own wager by clicking on the graph. CBS’s “Gary Unmarried” had an early lead. Here’s our run down on the new season. More…

“News Forecaster” Hubdub Announces Deal with Reuters (Sept 23rd 2008)

Hubdub, the online “news forecaster,” announces a partnership with Reuters that will allow users to predict the outcome of ongoing Reuters stories. Hubdub founder Nigel Eccles says that this is only the first of similar ventures. More…

Will Congress Pass a Bailout Bill? (Sept 25th 2008)

Do you think Congress will pass a bailout bill by its scheduled recess on Friday, continue to meet through the weekend, or give up and go on vacation?  Leave your answers in comments, or log into the news prediction Hubdub to place a virtual wager.  More…

Obama’s Up by a Wide Margin (Sept 25th 2008)

Hubdub has to have the best representation yet of how the candidates are doing in each of the various states. Follow this link to see a chart that tells you at a glance how they compare in each state. More…

Top 198 Social Media Sites by Niche (Sept 25th 2008)

For those of you who claim social media cannot help you due to the niche you are in, I highly doubt it. Here is a list of the top social media sites per their niche. Check them out and start using them to your benefit, these sites can generate a large amount of traffic when used properly. (Hubdub is listed just below Digg under Social News Sites). 

Popularity: 5% [?]

Place your Bets: Reuters Joins Hubdub’s Prediction Market (Sept 19th 2008)

International news service Reuters has set up shop on HubDub, a prediction market on topics ranging from politics to technology. The new partner section of the site will feature standard HubDub surveys, as well as a selection of top Reuters stories and widgets. You can access the Reuters portal here. More…

Hubdub Signs Partner Deals with Reuters (Sept 19th 2008)

Hubdub, the UK-based news prediction market aimed exclusively at a US audience, has today won a partnership deal with Reuters. Hubdub allows users to trade predictions with virtual money on the outcomes of breaking news stories and future events. It will run a new, dedicated Reuters section within the site. Reuters will generate questions for users to trade on based on the latest breaking news, such as the 2008 presidential election. The deal makes a lot of sense - prior to this Reuters-sourced questions were already among the most popular on Hubdub. More…

Reuters Joins Hubdub’s Prediction Market (Sept19th 2008)

International news service Reuters has set up shop on HubDub, a prediction market on topics ranging from politics to technology. The new partner section of the site will feature standard HubDub surveys, as well as a selection of top Reuters stories and widgets. You can access the Reuters portal here. More…

Hubdub Partners with Reuters for News Predictions (Sept 19th 2008)

Hubdub runs a news prediction game site where users can place bets with virtual money on how certain news stories will turn out. Based on current betting, for instance, people believe that Monday’s Gallup presidential poll will favor Barack Obama. Now the Scottish company is announcing that Reuters will partner with it to integrate Reuters’ news reports into Hubdub’s prediction site. Reuters will also put Hubdub widgets on its own site, helping Hubdub get access to wider distribution. More…

Prediction News Marketplace Partners with Reuters (Sept 19th 2008)

London-based Hubdub is a predictive marketplace for news. The basic idea is that Hubdub posts questions, you predict which answer will win and then if you are correct, you receive credits that help you reach the leaderboard. Hubdub launched at DEMO earlier this year and SomewhatFrank and TechnicallySpeaking have good overviews of how the service works. Hubdub CEO Nigel Eccles noted that over 2 million “Hubdub dollars” are traded daily within the network. More…

Reuters Links up with Hubdub (Sept 19th 2008)

Reuters has become the first news organisation to build a presence on news prediction web startup Hubdub. Hubdub, which is based in Edinburgh but has a mainly US audience, lets users make predictions and bet with virtual money on the outcome of news events.

Previously its only partnership with a news organisation was the Huffington Post, which syndicates some Hubdub content on its own site.

The Reuters section within Hubdub will allow Reuters editors to generate questions, ranging from the credit crunch to the 2008 US presidential election. More…

Prediction Markets - Different Value to Different Audiences (Sept 21st 2008)

In his Mercury’s Blog, Jed Christiansen discusses the value of public versus private prediction markets, and analysises what the Reuters Deal means for Hubdub and prediction markets as a whole.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Image via WikipediaWe are very excited to announce that we are partnering with Reuters which gives them a presence on Hubdub. Reuters is the world’s largest multimedia news organization with more than 2,400 journalists across the globe. Reuters news reaches over 1 billion people per day (I guess you could say they are quite big).

The partnership details are outlined in the press release below.

Reuters Press Release

Reuters is pleased to announce their new presence on Hubdub, the virtual prediction market site.

Hubdub allows users to trade predictions with virtual money on the outcomes of breaking news stories and future events, with approximately 2 million Hubdub dollars traded daily. As part of a new, dedicated Reuters section within the site Reuters generates questions for users to trade on based on the latest breaking news and ranging in topics from the current credit crunch to the 2008 presidential election. Reuters questions are already among the most popular on Hubdub.

Additional tools and resources are also included to help build a Reuters community within the site, including a “friends” application, comment capabilities, links to the top Reuters stories of the day and Reuters market widgets, found at http://www.hubdub.com/partners/reuters.

Finally, because Hubdub prediction markets aggregate thousands of trades, the site often produces accurate forecasts on the likelihood of future events. Beyond weighing in on the outcome, users are able to reference the site for up-to-the-minute information on the public’s predictions about breaking news from Reuters.

Examples of Reuters Questions on Hubdub:

• Which of these banks will be the next victim of credit crisis? 
• Will AIG still be a publicly traded company on October 1?
• Who will be leading in the Reuters Zogby poll after all three upcoming presidential debates?

Popularity: 5% [?]

A Glimpse of the Future: Predicting Which Company Will Win Seedcamp (Sept 14th 2008)

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest startup of all? Or rather, which of the 20 finalists will win this year’s Seedcamp and be crowned Europe’s hottest seedling? The competition is tough, but to add a bit of fun to the mix Hubdub is running a prediction market to forecast who will be taking the podium. Check it out here….

Hubdub The Game - (Sept 13th 2008)

Today I found out about a website called hubdub. It’s a game where you bet on what will happen with a news story - for example who will win the US elections. It doesn’t use real money, and it’s loads of fun….

Who Will Walk Away With ONA Awards Tonight? Hubdub Let’s you Guess (Sept 13th 2008)

The future looks bright ahead for social forecasting Web site Hubdub. Since its launch in early 2008, the UK-based Hubdub allows users to predict future news stories and events — even tonight’s annual Online News Association Awards.

“My vision is people using the markets to explain stories,” said Nigel Eccles, CEO and founder of Hubdub….

Techcrunch 50 - And the Winner is OtherIn…er, sorry, Yammer (Sept 11th 2008)

While many have been watching the TC50 livevlogging, I’ve been watching Hubdub’s prediction market with a lot more interest. In this case the market did not predict the winner. The eventual winner was not the predicted OtherInaBox, but Yammer, here predicted as a 5th place play…

Hubdub Space Predictions (Sept 11th 2008)

The reader behind the neuronexmachina persona at the Hubdub, the “News Prediction Game” tells me he has posted the following space related questions:
/– What will be the next US launch vehicle to send humans into orbit?
/– Who will land the next human on the Moon?
/– How many successful launches will SpaceX have by the end of 2009?
/– How many successful launches will SpaceX have by the end of 2014?

He says the questions need more traders (and informed ones) to improve their prediction accuracy. So join in.

What Will Happen To Lehmen Brothers (Sept 10th 2008)

What do you think will happen to the storied investment bank? A successful recovery? A Bear Stearns-style government bailout? Is Lehman Brothers too big to fail?….You can also use Hubdub, an online prediction market that allows users to wager virtual cash on the outcome of news events, to make a prediction about whether the government will bail out Lehman Brothers within the next 30 days.

The Wisdom Of Public Prediction Markets (Sept 4th 2008)

Kevin Kelly, co-founder and current editor-at-large at Wired, blogs about whether there is a difference in the prediction value of real money versus play money prediction markets, comparing Hubdub, Betfair, Intrade, Iowa Electronic Markets, and Newsfutures. He concludes that they actually carry the same validity, no matter whether it’s real or token money that is used.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Predicting Which Start Up Will Win Techcrunch50

Prediction market startup Hubdub is running a market on which of the 50 companies launching at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco will win. Although Hubdub is based in Scotland, they are actually a news prediction market aimed largely at the US. In fact, CEO Nigel Eccles recently wrote a great guest post on how to aim your startup at the US, without leaving Europe.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Hubdub Provides News Predictions To the Huffington Post

News forecasting game Hubdub (DEMO 08) today announced its partnering with the popular news Web site The Huffington Post so its readers can predict what they believe will unfold during the U.S. presidential election campagins and the outcomes of other thousands of news events from hurricanes to business controversies.

Popularity: 4% [?]