Predictify, a prediction market that launched back in 2007, is closing its doors. The service allowed users to vote on potential outcomes for current news stories (it likened itself to a “fantasy sports for everything else”). Users could have their accuracy measured across multiple polls, both on the site’s central hub and on partner sites, and the most clairvoyant of them were featured on the Predictify leaderboard.
Last year, the site seemed like it was starting to pick up steam: by summer 2008, it had forged partnerships with The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and it subsequently got CBS News as well. News sites liked Predictify because it could potentially increase reader engagement. Along with its media partnerships, Predictify also offered “Premium Questions”, which allowed businesses and market researchers to pose questions to the Predictify user base for a fee. The most accurate users would receive a portion of the money generated by the Premium Questions, and marketers were entitled to all of the resulting data (including demographics).
The site has posted the following:
Due to the tough economic climate, we are planning to cease operations and shut down the company in the near future. As such, we are no longer approving or scoring questions and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you have an account balance of $20 or more, please visit your account page and enter your withdrawal information by 11:59pm on August 31, 2009 to receive payment.
We sincerely enjoyed building and operating Predictify, and we’re glad that you could be a part of it.
The Predictify Team
Predictify has been added to the Deadpool.
Funny enough, you failed every test of natural outcome! I place no wages on your optimism.
I didn’t really expect this because the site seemed to be fairly popular and have a lot of user activity. My guess is what they had hoped for was a lot of Premium Questions from paying users that never materialized. In my year plus of membership, I managed to make a grand total $0.14 from my predictions — there just didn’t seem to be a whole lot of money passing hands so it wasn’t much of a prediction “market.” People seemed to like using it as a social site, though.
Aww I was about to post the question “How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?”
There’s Hubdub as a replacement which seems to be doing well enough.
What do you mean well enough? Traffic appears to be flat at best and still 1/4 of Predictify’s according to Compete.com
What, they couldn’t see this coming?
dammit, you got that joke in before me.
I’m sorry to see you go. I just learned about you on Twitter from “Bigbrains”
That really sucks. Cool idea though.
http://www.traderbots.com
Oh yeah, I’m sure this was ALL due to “the tough economic climate” and had nothing to do with the day-to-day decisions of that nutbag Parker and his band of merry men….
Jesus… they got $4.3m for that? Wow!
Ah, I see… they had silly VCs with no hits.
Prediction markets aren’t a crazy idea. A number of companies have had good success internally with them. They’re much better at predicting things like software schedules than executives are, for example.
Even if these guys didn’t make them work as a business, somebody else may.
Just as well. The founders were gigantic Douchebags who treated employees like crap and deceived the investors
Honestly, sites like these shouldn’t require a lot of capital to run. Your hosting costs will be low since you aren’t exactly streaming full length movies. An inventive CEO could keep this working with just 2 employees.
DIdn’t they see display advertising as a revenue stream? Relevant image ads next to the prediction queries would be a smart way to get advertising dollars.
Hi, Jason. Have you licensed that photo in the article?
Personally I want to read news, not read some predictions of who knows who user (their expertise and knowledge). These predictions are weak at best. They are more like a sentiment. Interesting idea though, but not really reliable in my opinion.
One has to admit professionalism and perseverance pays in the long run http://www.thessayist.com is an excellent aide for your academic needs.
This is an idea that can work. Needs a better, more fun business model
The fortune cookie is hilariously ambiguous.
It could be MS Outlook.
How come this stupid website cannot predict its own demise?
My prediction: Most companies with something-tify as their name will enter the deadpool
Who would have predicted?
I actually liked the concept very much! infact was trying to do something of this sort in sports..Has a lot of potential. Think polldaddy+surveymonkey+fun – not sure why they didn’t go to facebook apps or embedded blog widget or somthing.. i mean this couldn’t fail.
I’m sad.
YES!
Resurrection… this concept still has legs. Users enjoyed the site and partners built engagement of their userbase. rebirth