While StyleHop isn’t modeled to be a true prediction market where currency is used to wager on and predict winners, the idea is the same. Across many fields, the wisdom of the crowd is trumping the prognosticators and so-called expert forecasters. Just recently, however, there has been quite a bit of criticism of prediction markets.

The criticism started because the prediction markets did not accurately forecast the democratic primary outcome in New Hamphire. But it helps to remember the pundits were wrong, too. The promise of prediction markets and the wisdom of the crowd is not perfect forecasting. Rather, the claim is that you will see systematically higher forecast accuracy polling lots of ordinary folks versus asking just one expert. See both the blog at Hubdub.com and the Silicon Alley Insider’s post countering the criticism.

Hubdub is a London-based startup that is described in Techcrunch as a fantasy league for news. Users compete with each other to predict which news is most important. Hmmmm…….sounds a lot like what we’re trying to do in fashion at StyleHop. Good luck Hubdub!

editing