Markets, markets, everywhere…

In the last 2 weeks or so, there has been a flurry of interesting niche sites on TechCrunch that have piqued my interest.

• Farecast: Airline price insurance
• Price Protector: Price protection alerts
• PicksPop: Pop culture betting
• PicksPal: Sports betting
• SocialPicks: Stock picking
• Gottabet: Bet on anything
• Weatherbill: Bet on the weather
• My Currency: Crowd home & property valuations
• SccopLive: Paparazzi photos

These sites let users either cash in on what they know, or protect themselves from what they don’t. They allow bets and hedges to be placed on outcomes that are difficult to predict and inherently create markets for information.

I have been thinking a great deal recently on the commoditization of information in the Google age. Information that is in the public domain is extremely useful, but also “worthless” in the sense that doesn’t really generate alpha. Roger Ehrenberg of Monitor110 and Information Arbitrage has had quite a few interesting posts on the value of unique information and the commoditization of information within the public domain. He has also based his business around harvesting and, in a sense creating, unique information.

As more and more information becomes free and accessible, more and more value will be placed on information that remains unknown. The sites above create a marketplace for slices of the 99% of the world’s information that is not searchable via Google. Some of these sites may face some rough sledding because their business models require volume and liquid markets to generate accurate and efficient prices. That said, the market value of anything is whatever someone else is willing to pay for it. Services that link parties that have placed disparate values on the same item (a la eBay) are the ones that create effective markets and generate real value for end users.