Industry Standard prediction market...

I've been fascinated with Prediction Markets like Celebdaq etc for a long time (see earlier post here), and wondered whether one could do it for the new tech/media industry - Yahoo tried but it hasn't really worked, now it looks like the Industry Standard will try one:

From TechCrunch:

This time around, though, The Industry Standard is a Web-only property with decidedly less ambition and a new twist on generating content from its audience. The site will cover some of the same ground as its predecessor (Internet businesses, online media, venture capital). But it will focus more on analysis than news, and involve its audience in making collective predictions about industry and company trends through a prediction market set up as a simple betting pool.

Sadly they are going the Old Media way of sucking in A-Lister content rather than good content (there are increasingly backchannel conversations going on about many A-Listers being not much more these days than Soundbite + Traffic Flog) , but the Prediction market allows user involvement in a new way:

The predictions aspect of the site is probably what makes it most novel. “We want great analaysis that helps re-establish the brand,” says Butcher, “but the prediction market is the pageview driver.” On the home page, there are predictions for events such as “Yahoo will accept Microsoft’s acquisition offer” or “Q1 online ad revenues will be up from 2007.” The predictions are expressed as percentage probabilities based on how many people bet each way. When you register as a member, you receive $100,000 in pretend money to bet on questions across the site. Unlike regular voting or polling, you can make your vote count more by betting more money. The readers who end up making the best predictions will see their names pop up on a leaderboard on the site.

TechCrunch notes the flaw with this one:

...prediction markets work best when there is something real at stake—money or reputation, generally. When it is play money and anonymous usernames, as is the case here, my prediction is that it will be seen as nothing more than a gimmick. Anyone care to place a bet on that?

Absolutely - correct answers should gather points, and points must mean prizes. How about the most succesful predictors having their blogs installed as part of the feed - after all, they must know something, surely!

Or is the fact that Industry Standard 2.0 coming back just a sure prediction that the market is near peak?