Sublime

By tapping the public’s mood and opinions, they’re trying to predict it all: Product sales. Top music hits. Movie box-office revenue. Academy Award and Grammy winners. Elections. Unemployment statistics.

Deriving the model is an automated act of trend spotting that explores a broad range of factors. I doubt

People’s behaviors are observed on computer networks, and computation serves to analyze that behavior. You can think of it as electronic sociology.

Besides, when an originator like Peabody bets, the SuperBook at least gets valuable information—one of the best bettors in the world has tipped his hand and the Westgate can use that to adjust its lines.

But as Clay Shirky has powerfully argued over the years, the Internet is brilliant at reducing the organizational costs of creating and maintaining groups, particularly casual groups that are defined by loose affiliations.