Here’s something neat. Though setting up a full fledged prediction market to do some serious business forecasts should probably engage the services of a professional firm, such as NewsFutures, there is now a do it yourself prediction market called CrowdIQ that looks very interesting indeed. The site lets you create your own market, which might be a nice way to dip your toe into this fascinating phenomena

Crowd IQ’s prediction markets cover sports, entertainment, pop culture and business too. Some subjects that are currently being traded include Apple Buzz, Bird Flu Pandemic, Enron, Interactive Television—and oh yes, whether Tony Soprano will be a goner by June 1. (I hope not, but with David Chase, anything’s possible).

Wonder what the odds are that prediction markets will become a mainstream corporate forecasting tool? (We’ll be writing about this in our April issue of The Information Advisor, which is a special issue about Web 2.0 and business research)

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