Something fishy in the pond?
I started running into links about a new news aggregator called Newspond. I have not played around with it very much yet, most especially since it does not play nice with my PSP’s web browser, but it seems to remind me of another site that I used to play with.
ThotMarket is (was?) a “marketplace of ideas.” In it’s first public beta, it seemed to fill two different niches. One was as a weighted (think Digg) bookmarking (think del.icio.us) site, while the other was a more bizarre take on search results (“I like naked girls, so I’m gonna use my ThotDollars to buy lots of stock in these Google search results!“) The public beta closed in October 2007 and is expected to return to a public beta later this month.
The reason that Newspond reminds me of ThotMarket is in the valuation system. Newspond describing how it works:
Carefully, Newspond pieces together all of the intricate information nailing down exactly how much buzz a particular story has, and produces a number – the story’s “Buoyancy Rating”
And ThotMarket, describing how it works:
Basically, both use an inscrutable valuation system that seems to almost arbitrarily assign some imaginary meaning to … well, to URLs. On the good side, Newspond sure looks pretty. As long as you are not trying to view it on your mobile device. Then it doesn’t.
Hey, thanks for the mention of ThotMarket. I created it and am pulling things together for the second public beta release. I’m not sure that I agree that thotmarket’s valuation system was/is inscrutable. In the first release, it did rely on an algorithm that tried to simulate market tides based on user feedback (buying and selling). Granted, I was never able to get the algorithm to work very well, which led to the eventual collapse of the market, but it was based on user’s buying and selling. The new system, which will make a public debut in a few days, does away with the algorithm all together, and relies on a much more direct mechanism for setting trading prices, and rankings. I hope you;re able to check it out and report on whether you find it to be any more (dare I say) ’scrutable’. BTW, I agree that Newspond sure is prrrty.
… ThotMarket dude talk on my site! [geek out!]
Nevertheless, I felt that the valuation system was very much inscrutable, i.e. not readily understood. Which is absolutely what you were intending. Unless one is a bit of a Hari Seldon, trying to understand the market tides is an exersize in insane futility.