Prediction markets Prediction markets, also known as betting markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures or event derivatives, are open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives. They are exchange-traded mar ...

company NewsFutures (2000-2010) evolved into Lumenogic (2010-2019), "a consulting firm that specializes in developing and customizing online systems for large organizations to use to gather so-called

Collective Intelligence Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence (GI) that Emergence, emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiolog ...

from their employees",Stier, K. (2011) Lumenogic Mines Workers’ Opinions for U.S. Air Force, Multinationals. August 30, 2011
''

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician a ...

'' which in turn became Hypermind (born 2019).Wayback Machine Internet Archive's snapshot of Hypermind's webpage announcing the evolution from Lumenogic to Hypermind, October 25, 2019.
/ref> Founded in May 2000 by

Émile Servan-Schreiber Émile Servan-Schreiber (; 10 December 188829 December 1967) was a French journalist. He was the co-founder of '' Les Échos''. He was the author of several books. Early life Émile Servan-Schreiber was born as Émile Schreiber on December 20, 18 ...

and Maurice Balick, NewsFutures, Inc. was one of the earliest providers of prediction markets to both the general publicRobinson, S. (2001) Play Money? Not to These News Investors. July 5, 2001
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''Surowiecki, J. (2003) Decisions, Decisions. March 17, 2003
''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' and private companies. It played a leading role in applying collective intelligence and prediction markets to business forecasting, innovation, and decision making. It was one of several companies that help large corporations set up private prediction markets to capture the collective foresight of their employees or client base, as described in

James Surowiecki James Michael Surowiecki ( ; born April 30, 1967) is an American journalist. He was a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'', where he wrote a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page". Background Surowiecki was born in Meri ...

's book ''

The Wisdom of Crowds ''The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations'', published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups ...

''. NewsFutures is one of the few prediction market companies cited in the book.Surowiecki, J. (2005) ''The Wisdom of Crowds.''

Anchor Books Vintage Books is a trade paperback publishing imprint of Penguin Random House originally established by Alfred A. Knopf in 1954. The company was acquired by Random House in April 1960, and a British division was set up in 1990. After Random Ho ...

, pp. 20, 279-280 From September 2000 to October 2009, NewsFutures operated one of the best known prediction market games on the Web, listing contracts on over 120,000 events on a wide variety of topics in current events, politics, finance, and sports.Paranada, D. (2007) Betting on Tomorrow's news. ''Online Journalism Review'', March 7, 2007
/ref> The accuracy of its predictions was recognized by James "wisdom of crowds" Surowiecki himself, when he wrote in the

New Yorker New Yorker may refer to: * A resident of New York: ** A resident of New York City and its suburbs *** List of people from New York City ** A resident of the New York (state), State of New York *** Demographics of New York (state) * ''The New Yor ...

in 2003: "In a sense, the NewsFutures traders are only trying to do what op-ed writers, TV pundits, and Presidential advisers attempt to do every day: predict the future. The big difference is that the markets are far more likely to be right.''"'' In his book, Surowiecki called it one of "the two most important online trading sites," the other being

Intrade Intrade.com was a web-based trading exchange whose members "traded" contracts between each other on the probabilities of various events occurring. After having been forced to exclude US traders in 2012, on 10 March 2013 Intrade suspended all tra ...

. NewsFutures founder

, a son of famed journalist and politician

Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, often referred to as JJSS (13 February 19247 November 2006), was a French journalist and politician. He co-founded in 1953 with Françoise Giroud, and then went on to become president of the Radical Party in 19 ...

, has been a leading proponent of the idea that prediction markets should be viewed as "quasi journalistic" ventures, i.e., that their predictions are newsworthy content. The NewsFutures market had a distinctive international flavor because it also operated markets in French and in Hungarian, enabling U.S.-based players to trade with European counterparts, each in their own language. From November 2001 to January 2004,

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

co-branded the NewsFutures Sports and Money prediction markets. During the 2003-2004

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

season, the play-money predictions of NewsFutures were systematically compared to the real-money predictions of

TradeSports Tradesports.com was a web-based fantasy sports predictions game. Tradesports announced it was closing for business on November 30, 2015. Daily contests included all major sports in season like MLB, the NFL, the NHL, the NBA, College Football and ...

(now

) and found to be just as accurate. This result contradicted the

conventional wisdom The conventional wisdom or received opinion is the body of ideas or explanations generally accepted by the public and/or by experts in a field. History The term "conventional wisdom" dates back to at least 1838, as a synonym for "commonplace kno ...

that "''putting your money where your mouth is''" should enhance prediction market accuracy, and it has served to enhance the credibility of play-money markets and boost their adoption in enterprise contexts where real-money betting is illegal. NewsFutures also launched in 2007 the first charity-driven prediction market,

Bet2Give Bet2Give.com was an online prediction market company started in 2007 by Émile Servan-Schreiber and Maurice Balick, as an offshoot to their NewsFutures. Bet2Give's premise was that having the winnings going automatically to a charity of the winner' ...

,Bet2Give featured on Maria Bartiromo's CNBC show "Closing Bell", December 21, 2007
/ref> where real money was being wagered but all profits had to be given to charities of the winner's choice.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Hypermind Website

Trading Uncertainty and Collective Intelligence
Emile Servan-Shreiber's presentation in the Context Club (St.Petersburg, Russia) Prediction markets Collective intelligence