This Just In

Media Contact: 
Parker Barrile
pr@predictify.com
650-488-4900



Predictify Launches New Homepage to Highlight Crowd-Sourced Predictions on the Day’s News; Veteran Journalist, David Weir, Joins as Editor-in-Chief

REDWOOD CITY, CA – June 9, 2009 – Predictify, the community-based prediction website that allows users to test the theory behind the popular book "The Wisdom of Crowds," has launched a new home page that connects predictions with breaking news stories and events.

"We want to layer a unique editorial voice on top of our vibrant prediction community so that our users can read a news story, make a prediction on the topic, and have a discussion all in one visit," said Predictify CEO Parker Barrile. "Our new homepage makes reading the news an interactive and forward-looking experience.”

To lead the editorial effort, Predictify has hired veteran editor and blogger David Weir. "I'm thrilled to join this team," said Weir, who formerly helped build Salon.com, Wired Digital, and other web companies and currently writes a column about the media industry for BNET. "Anybody curious about the future, numerical projections, crowd-sourcing, and community media will love this new service.”

Predictify's latest strategic moves come just as twenty-one leading researchers in the field reported in Science Magazine, "There is mounting evidence that [prediction] markets can help to produce forecasts of event outcomes with a lower prediction error than conventional forecasting methods."

The experts stated that the accuracy of everything from election projections, to sales of new products like computer printers, to storm forecasts by the National Weather Service, can be improved through prediction market technology that harnessing groups of informed people motivated to express their opinions.

Predictify's new editorial strategy will also highlight the data generated by the tens of thousands of predictions made on the site every day. "We have a lot of interesting data on a wide variety of topics that we'll present in digestible bites," Barrile stated. On each question, the collective prediction can be filtered by demographic attributes and past predictive accuracy to identify meaningful differences between user groups – for example men vs. women, Democrats vs. Republicans, or new users vs. those who have been especially accurate in the past.


About Predictify

Predictify is a community-based prediction platform that makes predicting real-world events easy and fun. Users can research, discuss and predict the future, build a reputation based on their accuracy, and even get paid real money when they’re right. Marketers can create awareness, engage consumers, and gather data by posting promotional questions about a product or service. Since its launch in October 2007, Predictify has partnered with the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Freakonomics.

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Note: "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations" was authored by James Surowiecki.