Terry's MBA 734 Blog

Is it a good idea to encourage ALL employees to trade in these markets? Should insiders and/or highly uninformed people be allowed to trade? Do they help or hurt the market?

I think that the aggregate of information leads to anonymity in the same way as statistical information. So the more users that participate in the prediction markets the less likely you are to notice that someone from a Google division with inside knowledge is trading on a sure thing. Additionally for an insider to make lots of goobles they have to bet against the market on a sure thing but it would be hard not to have information slip out about projections and thus they would end up betting the same way as most other traders. I think overall they can hurt the market by spreading misinformation while betting correctly but they may give guidance to ambiguous markets.

Online social networks have become ubiquitous in the past few years. What forms of value do users get from these services and who is most likely to sign up on LinkedIn versus other sites?

With social networks users have several forms of value to offer and LinkedIn is interesting because it provides an upfront focus: "Over 35 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities."
You can see that a sense of professionalism is expected and that there are stated things that you would exchange with someone while using the system. From that site mission statement you could expect to meet other professionals and possibly find job opportunities.
The site Facebook offers the contrast of broad or even lack of focus in its mission statement: "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life."
This seems like it would let you expand personal life online in whatever shape or form that takes. You don't have to be professional, collegiate, or fit into some other category. There is little guidance as to what to do other than to connect and share.

I think the sites are different enough to have users duplicate their online profile on either site but the potential LinkedIn user would most likely have 1)desire to connect professionally 2)desire for employment/hiring/networking, or 3)have some idea that needs funding.