Demand Satisfaction!

There’s fantasy baseball, why not fantasy news?

I am hardly a sports fan (I didn’t watch one minute of the Super Bowl), but ask me to put odds on the future outcome of news stories, and you’ve just captured my interest. Am I willing to bet on Obama vs. Hilary? In my mind, I’ve been doing that anyway.

Hubdub is a site that lets users track news stories and predict their outcomes. It’s gambling on the news, essentially, but with fake money. I’m not sure if wagering fake money is better or worse than wagering real money, but judging from my past experiences in Las Vegas, they’re probably doing me a favor by letting me only pretend to be a high roller.

This Digg as a stock market approach is new and novel and, of course, still in development. The rules aren’t yet set in stone, but the founders of the site refreshingly have decided to solicit as much input as possible from users about how those rules are made.

Hubdub started using Get Satisfaction when they went live with their site a few weeks ago, and participation has grown rapidly. They liked us so much they decided to turn it into a place to discuss how to settle disputes:

“A couple of users have asked if there is an escalation process if they disagree with the question settlement). At the moment there isn’t; however, I’d like to try something out. What I am proposing is when a settlement is disputed I will post the dispute here and you can comment what you think the correct settlement should be. We will then use the consensus to re-settle the question.”

This is an interesting way to use Get Satisfaction, and one that we haven’t seen before. The discussions have ranged from condemnation of the system to praise for the players to puzzlement over just how the algorithm works. One thing is for certain, it hasn’t been dull. But input from this community, on the whole, has been quite positive, and I was pleased when I read this post:

“Wow, a forum without a flame war! How refreshing is that 8^)”

Would that sentiment ring as true if actual money were changing hands on Hubdub? Perhaps not. Either way, I’m going to mark that one as a “win” for Get Satisfaction. And ante up for the next round.

[Hubdub is on Get Satisfaction.]