Ideas26 Dec 2007 02:16 am

Youtube Stock Market

So I’ve been kicking this idea around in my head, and decided that I would write about it.

I was thinking about how cool it would be to have a stock market of internet meme’s that is driven by youtube. What you would do, is pick a video “stock” and if it got more successful, you could win money (or just points) and if it went less successful, less money/points. Success could be measured by hits/day, links, or any other random fact. If you start a meme, it could really make you rich / have a lot of points. In order to get the most functionality, you would need to operate your own site, such as break.com, youtube.com, or any other random dump for internet video’s. Obviously there would be a lot of security issues such as ballot stuffing and such, but still, I think it would be a fun game to play. Maybe have a leader board of the top brokers in the game.

You could make money by charging for trades, putting a small commercial before the most popular video’s, or just simple ads on the site.

Has this been done before or thought about? Or am I just a crazy nut with a terrible idea?

4 Responses to “Youtube Stock Market”

  1. on 26 Dec 2007 at 4:39 pm   Bennett Andrews

    Interesting that you happen to post this now. Over break I have been reading “The Wisdom of Crowds” (which I would totally suggest reading sometime). If you haven’t seen it, it is basically about the power of collective intelligence when harnessed properly.

    I bring this up because in the book, Surowiecki talks about the power of virtual prediction markets like the idea you are talking about. It turns out that these markets are often extremely successful at predicting things, more so than any one person. The one I am most familiar with is the hollywood stock exchange . I know it has been around for a bit and is pretty popular. Surowiecki thesis also points out some specific characteristics, such as diversity, independence, decentralization, and aggregation in order to make the most successful use of prediction markets, which is definitly worth a look if you are thinking about something like a Youtube stock market.

    I think this idea of collective intelligence is becoming more and more popular. There is still plenty of room for innovation both in terms of products and in money making.

  2. on 26 Dec 2007 at 4:54 pm   Luke Hoersten

    I guess I’m missing the point. Are you suggesting this is a game which people play or a way of actually “rating” online media? If it is for rating, it reminds me of two ways of weighting a graph. One way to represent the cost of an edge is to just have a “cost” value for each edge (say 5). The other way is to allow each edge count only as cost 1, and then 5 edges would be used to represent a cost of 5 between two nodes.

    So, most voting systems (like Digg) allow each person to have a vote of cost one. But if people were allowed to raise the value of their diggs and buries at some cost to the user, it’s really the same thing as a stock market.

  3. on 27 Dec 2007 at 4:18 pm   Logan

    @Bennett
    I’ve heard several times that the collective intelligence of a group of people is much, much greater than the intelligence of any single person, but then again – there will always be the role of how smart the group is and such. (As in a group of 5 year olds probably won’t out smart a Jeopardy contestant, but who knows?)

    @Luke
    It would really be a game they play, not just a rating. But then again, wouldn’t a high valued stock mean a good video?

    I guess it would be similar to your digg reference, but not exactly (unless I misunderstood). They would have X digg points, and could “invest” them into digging an article. If the article got a lot of digg’s, then they get more digg points. If the article flopped, then they would lose their digg points that they invested.

    It would be a very fun game… the “Digg Market”! (Man I wish I had time to work on something like that!)

  4. on 27 Dec 2007 at 6:38 pm   bennett

    There is a difference between “digg” style voting and a stock market type game. In digg you are voting stories you like. With a market, things are completely different. You vote/pay for things that you perceive have value. You not only have incentive to pick whatever has the most value, you are also being punished if you don’t. They seem to measure two different things.

    The point which I getting at was that the value for such a service like a youtube stock thing isn’t really in the product itself, but the data that it provides. Thats where you can make money, if that is your goal.