Facebook Forecast: the inside story of Meta's first prediction market, with Rebecca Kossnick

Meta once ran a points-only prediction market called Forecast, and a successor called Arena was reported this summer. Rebecca Kossnick, who led product on Forecast and is now co-founder and CEO of AI video platform Hypernatural, told the NEXTPredict Podcast how it started and why it ended.

In this episode

• Kossnick says her team came upon forecasting and prediction markets as a way to drive discussion, not necessarily to create accurate forecasts (2:27).

• Forecast launched around April or May 2020, right after COVID hit, and early forecasts focused on COVID and news (3:32).

• Players were not given infinite points; they got them from startup capital or by forecasting well, so people with the points to sway a market had shown skill (5:16).

• She says people still do not understand that a price of 70 cents means a 70% likelihood, and that settling criteria remain a challenge (11:39).

• She says Forecast did not continue mainly because she and her partner Taylor both left, and a small startup without its founders struggles to keep going (18:44).

• She heard Meta is still not using real money and calls that really smart (20:54).

Episode from the NEXTPredict Podcast by NEXT.io, published on YouTube.