Issues with betas...

I want to write a little more on Inkling and CrowdIQ now that I've
had a chance to play with them for a little while.

First of all, CrowdIQ is now officially beta. The various markets
are populated with contracts, and other contracts are in auction. I
have a number of comments on this site:

* As a trader you have quite a bit of control over what you're
doing. There are options available for "Market Buy" and "Market
Sell" as well as Limit Buys and Sells and finally Market Short-
Sells. This is certainly not an algorithm-based market (such as
Inkling)
* A number of the markets have contests associated with them, so
traders have incentives. (Amazon.com gift certificates and the
like). Hopefully that will help "thicken" the market.
* The user interface on CrowdIQ still feels a bit unwieldy. Perhaps
part of that stems from the fact that the main groupings of markets
are at the bottom of the page and sometimes I need to scroll down to
see them. I'd also like to see a "New Markets" and/or "Most Active
Markets" listing.
* I'm also not a huge fan of the different currency for every market,
though I understand the reasoning. A person's performance in order
to win incentives is based on that particular market alone.
* I think it is brilliant how CrowdIQ has made it so easy to create a
new market and devise contracts within that market. I created the
BirdFlu market myself. There is a lot of control for a user to
specify the number of contracts available, shares available, how long
a contract is in "auction" status before you can start trading on
contracts, etc. I confess that I created the BirdFlu market and
contracts with little thought to all of that (I was interested in the
user interface at the time since the site wasn't even active) and am
interested to see how it all turns out.

Overall, I really love the flexibility of the CrowdIQ site, and hope
they can work through some of the usability issues.

As for the Inkling market, I have to admit that the simple elegance
of their user interface is still fantastic. I'm a little put off by
the trading algorithm, however. I think that when purchasing shares
the site needs to present more data than what is currently there, so
that you don't accidentally drive the price of a contract well above
what you meant to do. For experienced traders this interface will
very likely be frustrating, since we're used to bid/ask prices and
standard terms like that. In the Inkling world, you have to tweak
your purchases and short sells so as to not unbalance the market.
The way the user interface works, though, makes it fairly intuitive
for a person new to trading.

I do still have a problem with the way one particular market works,
however. (The US House of Reps contract, but I've discussed that
before.)

Both sites are still very much beta, and I'm sure their founders/
owners both appreciate and probably get a little frustrated with some
of the extra attention. At the same time, I think it's great that
two new prediction markets opened up within the last month. It gives
us all new sources of examples and hopefully demonstrates the
potential in the marketplace for these markets.

Cheers for now.