yahoo research’s buzz game lacks buzz

recently i found the buzz game set up by yahoo research and o’reilly. it looked like an interesting tool to look at technology developments and their future potential. in a way a small scale version of what darpa a couple of years had planned to identify new terrorism threats by creating a threat market on which experts could “bet” on potential threats.

the buzz game allows users to bet on on technologies, starting with a starting capital of $10,000. and then you make money by betting on technologies, like the ipod or the xbox, operating systems like vista or os x, browsers … the only problem with the buzz game is that it lacks buzz. if you look at most market segments you will find price graphs like this one that shows the different mp3 players:

the top red line is the ipod, grey is lyra, blue is archos, orange zen, green iriver, and purple rio. and this is were the problems of this game start. where is the zune? in mid december to not be able to buy zune shares is a travesty.

which leads me to the problem of the game and while i think it is a complete waste of time. if i want to know about how technologies will be adopted in the future then i need to have the market tell me if the market will accept a future gadget, technology. but if all that is available on the market are proven, tested, old technologies then this doesn’t tell me anything. this is why there is so little change in prices. i know the ipod is on top, but why can’t i add a new technology and is not yet available and see if the market will buy it? after all the stock market is about investing in future potential and not past performance. and the buzz game is all about past performance.

this could have been an interesting experiment, but failed to create any meaningful output.