The Official Predictify Blog -

There's An 'I' in Predictify

A lot of companies have appended the word 'My' to personalizable versions of their product or service - MyYahoo, MyCokeRewards, even MySpace.

Now you can add Predictify to that list. Today we launched ... you guessed it - MyPredictify ... a tool that allows users to create their own custom "prediction centers".

With MyPredictify, it's easy to build your own page with a custom logo, fonts, and colors and just the questions that interest you. When you’re finished, your page will be available at http://<yourname>.predictify.com so that you can link to it from your blog or website or send a link to your friends. Plus, you’ll receive a referral bonus every time new user who registers for Predictify on your page receives a payout.

Click here to get started. And, as always, let us know what you think.

Parker

Got Funding?

We're excited to announce that we raised $4.3 million in funding from Sierra Ventures and Sherpalo Ventures earlier this month. We're honored to be working with such highly-respected investors ... and we hope that some of their past success will rub off on us!

The money will allow us to grow our team so that we can deliver more great features even faster AND launch more partnerships like Freakonomics. So stay tuned for big things in 2008.

Speaking of which, we're hiring. Check out our jobs page for more info and specific postings.

Parker

Comments re: Comments

At Predictify, we don't believe in the 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' rule. Instead, our motto is 'If it can be better, improve it'. Which is why we just launched a new comments system with some cool new features, including:

• A cleaner UI that's easier to read
• A rating system so that you can rate other users' comments by clicking on the 'thumbs-up' and 'thumbs-down' icons
• Synchronization between the question page and the results page, so that a comment posted on one page will show up on both pages
• Ability to reply to another user's comment
• Ability to report inappropriate or offensive comments to Predictify customer support

We're still working out the kinks, so we'd love to hear your feedback.

Parker

Predictonomics Freak-ified

We like to think that Predictify is plenty "freaky" on its own. But when the opportunity to partner with Freakonomics, the "freak-est" blog on the web, presented itself, we jumped on it.

Today we launched the Freakonomics Prediction Center, where users can predict the outcome of the issues discussed by Freakonomics co-authors, Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner.

Now you can get your daily economic news and prediction fix all in one place. Enjoy!

Parker

$80 in Three Minutes?

Where else on the web can you earn $80 for simply sharing your wisdom? A Current Events Guru, sprocket24, precisely predicted the duration of the Hollywood Writers Strike, netting $79.65. How cool is that!? As a Guru, sprocket24’s payout was four times as much as it would have been if he were a Beginner. Click here to learn more about levels of expertise. 

What will be the largest single payout in 2008? Make your prediction today!

Ed

The Oscars

Given all the excitement about The Oscars, which are just 10 days away, we created a themed page to highlight the Oscar-related questions on Predictify. In our collective opinion, it looks pretty cool. Check it out at http://oscars.predictify.com. And tell your friends!

We plan to launch several more themed pages over the next few weeks, so stay tuned. We might even allow you to make your own custom prediction center with the topics that interest you. Hint hint.

Parker

A Face For Radio

What's cooler than being featured on Marketplace on National Public Radio? As avid NPR listeners, we can't think of anything. So we were excited, really excited, when Marketplace ran a segment on Predictify earlier this week. Click here to read the transcript and/or listen to the audio.

The segment focused on Predictify's marketing applications. Both Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, and Kathleen Seiders, a professor of Marketing at Boston College, agreed that Predictify is an innovative and effective marketing platform. By structuring a marketing message as a prediction challenge, companies can create highly engaging and immersive advertising experiences - something we call "engagement marketing". What's more, since Predictify collects demographic information about predictors, marketers also get a rich data set of consumer insights.

If you'd like to learn more about how you or your company can use Predictify to market your product or company, send us an email at bizdev@predictify.com.

Parker

Prediction Voyeurism

Have you ever clicked on a username hoping to learn more about a user's past predictions? Until now, the profile page included a performance summary but no details about how a user had achieved 'Scholar' status and made $92.81 in the Pop Culture category.

Today we launched a new version of the profile page that allows you to see the predictions of fellow users - just click on any username to check it out. We also replaced the My History page with this new and (we think) better interface.

If you'd like to keep your prediction history private, you can limit access to just your friends on the My Account page).

As always, let us know what you think at feedback@predictify.com.

Parker

Expert$ and Guru$

We spent a lot of time designing Predictify's incentive system to reward users for consistent accuracy, not sheer prediction volume. We want the most knowlegeable and thoughtful users to rise to the top, i.e. to become Experts and Gurus, and to be disproportionately rewarded for their accomplishments.

Our plan appears to be working - just view the results of any question that has been scored, and filter the chart by level of expertise. In most cases, you'll notice that the 'Experts' and 'Gurus' predicted the outcome more accurately than, say, 'Beginners'.

To reinforce this behavior, this week we boosted the bonus payouts for Experts and Gurus. Now Experts get 2x the payout of Beginners for predictions of equal accuracy, and Gurus get 4x the payout - that's a lot! We also updated the payout emails to show which portion of your payout was determined by the accuracy of your response, and which portion was determined by your level of expertise.

So next time you make a prediction, remember that it pays to be accurate on Predictify.

Parker

New Post-Prediction Page

I hope everyone is enjoying the New Year. I wanted to let you know about a new change on Predictify. Recently, we altered the behavior of the site after you enter your prediction. Predicting on any new free question (or open premium question) will take you directly to a tabbed data view page.

The first tab on the data view page is a chart on which everyone's predictions are graphed. The idea is to let you visually see the prediction trends as time moves on and to see the predictions and rationales of other users. The other tab on the post-prediction page is the distribution graph, which shows the predictions broken down by demographic.

Have a look at the data and post a comment if you find anything interesting. We love to read the opinions and insights of our users.

Andy