MSNBC.com debuts iPredict
Cory Bergman June 6th, 2007
“iPredict allows you to make predictions around news events,” explains MSNBC.com’s Rex Sorgatz. “The application visualizes the public’s votes against your vote, storing your previous predictions with a cookie. When you return to the prediction later, you can change your vote. You see how your vote has changed over time, graphed out in comparison to everyone else’s prediction.” Here’s how I voted on this question (the green box), compared to the public’s average (the red line):
Rex goes on to explain, “Although we tend to think of news stories as ways to inform us of the past, I contend that every news story has an interrogative kernel hidden inside — a question about the future. Twelve people killed in Iraq? That story makes me wonder about the future of the war. LeBron James scores 25 straight points? That story makes me wonder if he really will be the next Jordan. Although news is immediately a historical account, it is also implicitly a gamble on the future, a suggestion of where things will be.”
As new stories about the topic occur, they’ll be mapped (and linked) on the same graph so you can see how new developments change the vote. Pretty cool, eh?
ABC station KGO has been experimenting with “ABC 7 Futures Market,” a similar yet simplier approach to mapping predictions on stories. It’s powered by Inkling Markets.
4 Comments Add your own
1. Chuck Madden | June 6th, 2007 at 8:55 am
In other words, it’s a poll
2. Tim Gold | June 6th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Yeah, I see a survey — just with a better display.
3. Rex | June 6th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Yep, it’s a poll, extended over time, prettied up, and given some user persistence (it remembers your votes, you can change your votes, etc.). That’s all it is.
Not to make hyperbolic comparisons, but the iPod is just a mp3 player. The entire goal of iPredict was to be simple. It *could* have been a massive futures market project, but will casual news users really invest in that? I happen to love futures markets, but this is intended to appeal to a lower-scale interaction model.
4. discreet_chaos | June 6th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I’m sure the whole thing is wonderful and Rex did his usual outstanding job, but I’ll have to fiddle with the thing later.
Instead, what’s prompting this comment were the headlines which came across my rss reader and which may have led back to the interface, but there really wasn’t a lot of explanation to go along with the underlying buttons.
“iPredict: Fred Thompson will win the GOP nomination”
“iPredict: Jefferson will not resign if not convicted”
Uh… No, duh….
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