Karmanetics is like Intrade, but legal

karmanetics.com

Personally I think the part that makes it legal (not trading real money) also makes it much less interesting or useful than Intrade. How does it grow a user base fairly representative of all opinions? The internet is full of sites whose user base's collective opinion strongly disagrees with me. I'm not usually inclined to hop on the site and tell a collection of random internet people that they're wrong. Even if I get to bump the number on some poll a little bit. On the hand, if you tell me that if I'm right and the random internet people end up being wrong, I get to take some of their money... now I'm listening.

Bottom line, real money on the line is a strong motivator for people with contrary opinions to participate. Karma is not.

Nice looking website though.

Definitely agree that a cash incentive would be better, but I think a karma based version is worth a shot. I'm looking at it more like an experiment than a startup at this point.

Look at wikipedia, which beats out any paid enycolpedia. The goal is similar: focus on a dedicated group of core users (news junkies/ econ geeks) who create something that is valuable for everyone.

Founder here. Questions/comments/nitpicking appreciated.

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