The Tech Buzz Game [stock market prediction]

Prediction markets, also known as information or decision markets, are designed to forecast future events or trends. Internet-based prediction markets can easily aggregate the insights of an unlimited number of potentially knowledgeable people asynchronously. The Tech Buzz Game - a joint venture between Yahoo! Research Labs and O'Reilly Media - is a fantasy prediction market launched in March 2005 at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology (ETech) Conference. The game consists of multiple sub-markets that pit a handful of rival technologies, each represented by a stock, against one another. The game's object is to anticipate future search buzz and buy and sell stocks accordingly. Thus, a player who believes BitTorrent stock is undervalued might buy shares, while a player who thinks BitTorrent is overpriced might sell the stock or instead purchase shares in a competing peer-to-peer technology. The Tech Buzz Game serves two key research-oriented goals. One is to evaluate the power of prediction markets to forecast high-tech trends. The other goal of the Tech Buzz Game is to field test the dynamic pari-mutuel market, a Yahoo! Research Labs trading mechanism designed to price and allocate shares.