Predictify Teams with Rock the Vote to Launch $100,000 Election Showdown
Predictify, an online prediction platform that adds an interactive, forward-looking dimension to the news, has partnered with Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to engaging young people in politics, to launch the $100,000 Election Showdown. The Showdown, a prediction challenge based on a series of questions about the upcoming presidential election, provides a forum for participants to research, discuss and predict the election in key states and win a portion of the $100,000 prize pool.
Predictify kicks off the $100,000 Election Showdown with the hope of encouraging interest and participation in the 2008 election, and as part of the challenge has combined an interactive map with key data from current polls and past election results to create a highly informative and interactive user experience.
“We believe that Predictify is a great way for young people to learn about, and engage in, this exciting presidential race,” said Heather Smith, executive director, Rock the Vote. “We’ve registered over 1.72 million voters this year and counting, and we continue to seek new ways to reach them online and keep them engaged in the buildup to Election Day on November 4th.”
The campaign, which will run from October 1 through 11:59 pm PT on November 3, 2008, offers participants the opportunity to predict the winner of the presidential election in 14 historically decisive states, plus the overall popular vote for McCain and Obama (15 questions total). Each of the 15 questions will include background data, links to relevant news and content, and a discussion forum for participants to debate their predictions. During the campaign Predictify will aggregate the predictions into a unique, crowd-sourced perspective on the election outcome. This data, which can be filtered by demographic attributes such as age, gender, and political affiliation, will be made available to interested parties in an interactive chart on the Predictify website.
“The Election Showdown combines all the best parts of Predictify — information discovery, discussion and debate, and collective wisdom,” said Parker Barrile, co-founder and CEO of Predictify. “We’re excited to provide a fun way to engage in this historic election and bring the wisdom of crowds to life as an alternative to conventional polls.”
After the election Predictify will score the participants based on the accuracy of their predictions and reward the most accurate participants with a share of the $100,000 prize pool. As part of the scoring process, participants will receive bonuses based on their level of expertise from past participation and performance on Predictify. Winners will be announced on November 6, 2008.
To make your picks and take a shot at predicting the election results, visit www.predictify.com/electionshowdown.
About Predictify
Predictify is a community-based prediction platform that makes predicting real-world events easy and fun. Users can research, discuss and predict the future, build a reputation based on their accuracy, and even get paid real money when they’re right. Marketers can create awareness, engage consumers, and gather data by posting promotional questions about a product or service. Since its launch in October 2007, Predictify has partnered with the New York Times, Freakonomics, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Post. Predictify can be found at www.predictify.com
About Rock the Vote
Rock the Vote’s mission is to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country. Rock the Vote uses music, popular culture and new technologies to engage and incite young people to register and vote in every election. And we give young people the tools to identify, learn about, and take action on the issues that affect their lives, and leverage their power in the political process. We are creative, effective, and controlled by nobody’s agenda but our own — we tell it like it is and pride ourselves on being a trusted source for information on politics. We empower the 45 million young people in America who want to step up, claim their voice in the political process, and change the way politics is done. Rock the Vote can be found at www.rockthevote.org.
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