Art Hutchinson blogged a couple of unrelated posts that mentioned
Prediction Markets peripherally and used the occasion to make some interesting points
himself. This is one of those rare cases where there’s more material
in the commentary than was evident in the sources. If you follow the
links back, you’ll find somewhat interesting blog entries that barely
touch on the ideas that Art took out of his encounter with them.

To summarize Art’s observations, the main things he pointed out were

  1. PM’s contribution to information gathering in bureaucratic
    organizations like intelligence agencies is in attracting outside
    experts, and giving them incentives to not be entrapped in group think.

  2. Yahoo’s Tech Buzz game is trapped in evaluating the level of buzz
    for competing products, which may or may not have much to do with
    commercial success.

  3. And finally, he reiterated the importance of choosing good metrics to base market outcomes
    on. If the markets don’t focus on the outcomes that we really want to
    know about, they’ll provide a confusing distraction rather than
    valuable information that will drive better decision making.

Art’s blog is worth watching if you are interested in Prediction Markets.