When you look at the Big Picture, do you feel like you're standing just outside the frame?
Financial adviser Steve Odom got that culture-potato feeling when he was mowing his lawn and an Alanis Morrisette song came on the radio for the umpteenth time. Certain that Morrisette was going to turn out to be a one-hit wonder, Odom thought to himself, "If that woman was a stock, I would love to short that stock right now."
Instead, Odom created the Invisible Hand Electronic Market, a Web site that allows netsurfers to get their fingers into the zeitgeist by buying and selling "contracts" pinned to the likelihood that a given event will occur.
Will Van Halen III stay in Billboard's Top 100 albums until 30 June? Without the Sammy Hagar factor in play, it's falling fast. Is the PalmPilot unstoppable in its sprint toward ubiquity, or will Windows CE devices carve chunks out of its market share? Will a judge's gavel flatten Clinton's career?
It's a zero-sum market with only play money at stake. Each contract is a "yes" or a "no," with each side going out initially at 50 cents, and the price going up or down depending on how many people buy it. If a contract reaches its goal -- say, if VH III is still hanging onto the 99th spot come 30 June -- everyone who bought the contract is paid US$1. Players get $10,000 in faux bucks just for signing up.
Although the money is strictly virtual, the top traders get real prizes: $500 gift certificates from CDnow, and subscriptions to Quote.com.
The Invisible Hand takes its name from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, which talks about the free market being guided by an invisible hand, a pervasive intelligence to which the government should take a laissez-faire, or hands-off, approach.
The Invisible Hand differs from similar sites that allow netsurfers to build portfolios of cultural "stock," such as the Rogue Market and the Hollywood Stock Exchange, by widening the turf of the game to include developments in the high-tech industry, finance, politics, and sports. Think the muscle from Redmond will prevail in the browser wars? Put your emoney where your mouth is.
If a contract pegged to the fate of a particular stock on Wall Street soars or tanks, says Odom, users might even be tempted to use the site as a bellwether. Odom compares the Invisible Hand to a combination commodities market and 24-hour-a-day poll.
"It gives you a little feeling of control" over events at large, he says. The topic areas were chosen to appeal to the average user, Odom explains -- people like himself.
"What am I interested in? Music, computers, sports. I watch a lot of TV and I sit in bars talking about politics. What do people talk about in the office? That's what our site is about," Odom says.
The site is currently in beta, and there are a few bugs in both spelling and functionality. Soon, Odom will be adding what he sees as a key feature of the interface: ICQ chat, which will allow traders to broker deals in real time. There are also conferencing forums so that the hot-button issues raised (will the Bulls win the NBA championship?) can be thrashed out.
Odom has poured $60,000 of his own money into the site. For now, the revenue model is advertising and sponsorships. A company interested in building the buzz about a film or a recording artist can even sponsor a contract about its client, and Odom is offering co-branded pages to other sites that want to add the contract game to their content.
"When I first thought about doing this, I thought about moving it offshore and letting people play with real money," Odom recalls. "But beside the legal complications, I didn't really want it to be a gambling thing. It's not just about the game. It's about getting people talking about these things."
