Buzz and Predictions

Buzz Game: Home

Reading a post on the O'Reilly website about games, AI and captchas, I noticed there was a rated list of RSS readers in the left hand navigation, attached to 'stock market' data. It turns out to be an embed from the Yahoo! Buzz game; essentially, Celebdaq for search terms. It's not new, of course, you'll have been aware of it for a while.

I noticed, however, that it was part of Yahoo! Research; it makes sense, as a stock market game about technology trends is a good area to attract an audience to the game. But then I though... what data could Yahoo! be deriving from the players?

Watching buying trends of technology related search terms would be an invaluable guide to investing in key products and technologies, and could give quick before-the-fact tipoffs to emerging players.

Interesting.