Over the last year there's been a few ambitious projects launched that are focussed on gathering the opinions of the user base and publishing the results. Their idea is a simple one, allow participants to vote on hypothetical, (or real) scenarios, gather the results and publish them. This is a good, honest intention that does have some real value. My impression on what most of them are trying to accomplish is cash in down the road when "entities" are clamoring to pay them for access to the eyeballs they've managed to spend time participating in what their system has to offer.
Augur is one that immediately comes to mind and the past couple of days I've seen Gnosis pop up with a crowdfund and a steady rise in the token they've issued. I like what these people are trying to do, but it really occurs to me that until they achieve a wide-spread, massive adaptation of their information gathering mechanism, their results are only going to reflect the narrow viewpoints of the current active user base. In other words, the people that decided to buy in and be part of the crowdfund. It'll most likely be fun for the participants, but there's no real value until you get the honest pulse of what everyone thinks. And yes, you need to hear what everybody thinks, not just those that are saying what you like of what them to say. Unfortunately, this isn't going to be quite as easy as they may be thinking it is.
The other part that bothers me, and this isn't just the prediction markets doing it, is how they never seem to have their product up and running before they look to get investors. In a nutshell, they're asking the world to send them perfectly good Bitcoin and Ethereum inn exchange for their token they've created before their product actually works. I mean come on, let me play with the toy a little before I plop down hard earned crypto that's taken me years to accumulate.
What really comes to mind as well, are the Steemit wannabes, (Synereo ;) that have tried to splash onto the scene, without actually having something that works first. It seems that they're confused by the cart before the horse saying I guess. They need to understand that their product is the horse and you need to feed, water and maintain the health of your pony first and worry about the cart later. The cart isn't going anywhere if the horse can't, or wont walk. BTW, the cart is really their crowdfund, and should be treated as such.
Someday, they're probably going to erect statues of the creators of Steemit for one simple reason: THEY DID IT. They created something from nothing and launched a product that worked. There were growing pains along the way and a hell of of a lot fur has flown, but now a year later, Steemit something they're all trying to mimic. Lucky for us I suppose.