Ways this website will make money

Advertising

Online dating or networking.

If people are going to be going threw and rating how much they agree or disagree with different ideas or beliefs, after a while this website would get to know a person pretty well. Why not allow users of this website to use this information to meet like minded people? I can't remember a whole lot from my statistics class, but I imagine it working something like this. On my website you would say, on a scale from one to 10 how much you think an idea or a reason to agree or disagree with an idea is valid. You could then be compared to other people who use this website. For instance person A might give the position represented on issue number 1 a score of 6 (out of ten). Person B might give that position a score of 7. So on this issue they are one point away from each other. After a while you could find out what the average point difference is between you and another person. Two people who agreed all the time would have an average point difference of zero (this is highly unlikely). This is where statistics come in (42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot (Steven Wright).). If two people agree once, that does not necessarily mean that they are a good match. Statisticians call this a confidence interval. If we defined similar minded people as individuals who are always within two points of each other, we could come up with a confidence interval that two people are "similarly minded".

We should use the idea stock exchange to match individuals who want to date or network.

If people are going to be going threw and rating how much they agree or disagree with different ideas or beliefs, after a while this website would get to know a person pretty well. Why not allow users of this website to use this information to meet like minded people? I can't remember a whole lot from my statistics class, but I imagine it working something like this. On my website you would say, on a scale from one to 10 how much you think an idea or a reason to agree or disagree with an idea is valid. You could then be compared to other people who use this website. For instance person A might give the position represented on issue number 1 a score of 6 (out of ten). Person B might give that position a score of 7. So on this issue they are one point away from each other. After a while you could find out what the average point difference is between you and another person. Two people who agreed all the time would have an average point difference of zero (this is highly unlikely). This is where statistics come in. If two people agree once, that does not necessarily mean that they are a good match. Statisticians call this a confidence interval. If we defined similar minded people as individuals who are always within two points of each other, we could come up with a confidence interval that two people are "similarly minded". If it gets good enough people would pay for it.

People will be able to invest in ideas, similar to the way people invest in stocks. We will make it like a game. People already bet in weather or not athletic teams will win or loose, we should do the same thing.

Predictive Markets Links:

If you buy stock in an idea you are trying to increase its perceived validity or you simply believe that this idea will go up in value in the future. Either way you will be able to make money if it goes up in value or you may loose money if it goes down in value.

There are lots of ways of letting people buy idea stock. One way would be to let people buy the idea, at the percentage of people who agree with it, plus a 3 cent sir charge for all transactions. For this system, you would need to find out what the sir charge per transaction should be to make sure that their is always money in the bank. Because if more people are making money, than loosing money, the system will go broke.

Another way would be to come up with a more formal system of evaluating an idea than a simple "do you agree" or "disagree". This system could evaluate on a scale of 1 to 10 how well the idea is written, if it is logical, if it is practical, concisely written, cost effective, efficient, fair, practical, peace promoting, etc. Perhaps people who submit reasons why they believe the system is "practical, or Peace promoting" will give the idea an extra point. People could then vote on which reasons an idea is or is not peace promoting, and the best reasons would go to the top of each column (reasons to agree or disagree columns).

A 3rd option would be to have a non-structured system were people are able to sell there idea stock at what ever price others are willing to buy them. This may pose a problem because of the law of supply and demand: their are tons of ideas on this website, so what would make one idea more valuable than another? A possible solution would be to limit the number of ideas that you can buy stock in, as the top 100 ideas on the site. Perhaps there could be a limited time for buying those stocks, like 6 months.

(I hate to mention the worst method last because it might get the most comments, being the most recent thing on people's mind. Why don't I put the worst idea first? I wanted people to keep reading.)

http://del.icio.us/myclob/predictivemarkets