Crowdsourcing the stock market

New market tools are emerging that could be much better (real-time and objective) indicators of performance than the traditional methods of speculation-driven stock market price, quarterly reporting, and financial statements.

These tech tools are a nice response to the perceived social economic malaise of the times, and could help to realize some of the new thinking promulgated by both theorists and activists that markets are more of a Darwinian game of the fittest rather than an invisible hand meeting favorably for all parties.

The new market tools - real-time performance indicators:

• Prediction markets (SimExchange, Hollywood Stock Exchange, Intrade) for unit sales data
  
• Real-time purchasing feeds (Blippy, Google Wallet, social shopping sites) for the aggregation of real-time purchase data
• Social media check-ins (FourSquare, Facebook, etc.) for revenue prediction
• Forum badging and site gamification (Badgeville) for measuring the digital economics of brand sentiment