Compare this to the user experience of a dull poll widget: You set up your question, add the widget code in your website; then every visitor of yours is able to submit his quick answer. Such a hassle-free option is available around the web, but, still, it’s just a static poll, and you have learnt to ask for more. Markets, that is.

Today, askmarkets bring the two worlds together, by keeping their benefits alone. And we are happy to introduce you the askmarkets widget, what we consider a cross-industry innovation, enabling you to replicate the full askmarkets functionality straight from your website. Full? Well, almost. You’d better check it out and judge by yourself, here is how it works:

- You log-in to askmarkets, and create a new market.
By turning your question into a prediction about the future, while the answers are the various potential answers – it is possible for almost every topic out there.
Or you just pick among the already available markets, the catalog is big enough and it keeps growing.

- Then you grab the html code to add it in your website.
You can also customize all two colors and dimensions, it’s as simple as it gets and it blends in with your website style.

- Now the market question with all the answers and their probabilities gets monitored in real time right in your website.
But, it doesn’t stop there.

- Every visitor of your website is now able, not just to see the latest results, but also to co-shape them, by trading into the relevant market right from the widget.
It does not require a login, each visitor (and session) gets ¥€$1000 to trade within the market(s). By just clicking on the outcome of choice, the cursor moves to the ‘Invest’ text field, where you just enter the amount you want and press the invest button, while watching the prices getting updated in real time (if you want to have more play-money available, you need to log-in first).

Enough said. You’d better take a look in the widget below, or go straight away and create one for yourself; questions in your website will never be boring again :)

You may also try our marketplace solutions and services, and create some widgets right from your enterprise marketplace.

We decided to launch our first marketplace as a small contribution to the website that inspired us through the years and we truly love. TechCrunch that is and today we are happy to announce “The (unofficial) TechCrunch marketplace“.

Building on the power and simplicity of our core product -we challenge you to find a simpler and more intuitive market interface around- we created a marketplace for start-ups, all the ones you can find on CrunchBase. And by now you can sign up or get in via facebook connect and start trading on the possibility of each of the start-ups getting acquired, getting further funding or heading to the deadpool.

Remember, the current price of a stock equals the probability of this outcome proving to be right. So, if you believe that the stock is undervalued, you have a reason to go buy some shares and sell them back later at a higher price, or wait for all play-money invested in the market to be redistributed to the owners of the winning stock, right when one of the outcomes proves to be true and the market closes. Also, if you can’t find a market for the start-up in which you’re interested, you can create it by just going to the relevant screen, searching CrunchBase for the specific keyword and clicking on the result of your choice, it’s a one-step process.

Eventually, the more money you have gained the bigger your impact will be on shaping prices, therefore expectations, about the future of each start-up. So, we think it’s both engaging and useful, a really fun way of aggregating information which exists out there about the future of our beloved tech companies, and we are looking forward to your very own ‘bets’ and collective insights.

And please share your comments with us, tell us what you like and what you don’t, and, in the case that you just love our service and you want such a public or private marketplace for your community or enterprise, just contact us.

P.S.: And, yes, we’re techcrunched!

Well, you’d better stop thinking of how you would react and act now on what you just read, because all and every combination of the above is possible, starting today. And you don’t need to worry about regulations or products or real money or anything. This is as simple and straightforward as it gets, with all the joy, functionality and actual (non-monetary) value included, minus the parts that used to make all these impossible.

We’re talking about our software, of course, and as you may already know the askmarkets marketplace is simultaneously a game, a bet, a market, and much more. And we do believe that we have the most simplistic market functionality and interface around or as Tim O’Reilly put it “the pbwiki of prediction markets”. But, today, we’d like to present you something even more better and useful.

We’re excited to announce the public launch of our services, giving to each one of you the ability to create your very own marketplace, with a few clicks. We’re talking about a clone of the askmarkets.com marketplace, which you may customize to your looks and feels, define it as public or private and fully administrate everything happening inside.

We’re not kidding: you may go now, create your own marketplace and see for yourself. To spice it up even further, we give you the first 30 days for free. Yes, unlimited number of markets, traders and predictions, with the domain prefix of your choice and you may experience the whole thing for free, no small print attached.

After the first month, there is a single, simple and transparent pricing plan, charging you $50 + $1.00 per market + $0.50 per trader + $0.05 per prediction, more details are available here. Moreover, we’re also fine tuning an option with extended features, for those of you who want even more; you can contact us for the details.

You may call it wisdom of crowds, collective intelligence or just the most enjoyable information aggregation mechanism. What we definitely believe is that our marketplaces are of great value wherever people and information co-exist (isn’t this everywhere?) and we’d love to watch them fostering conversations and facilitating the predictive and aggregation processes along your companies and communities.

You’ll find more reasons about why you probably care, why markets may work for you and why you may pick askmarkets, or you can just go create your marketplace right now and experience everything in practice, it just takes a minute and it’s free.

To cut a long story short…

Get your own copy of askmarkets for your enterprise or community.
Create a custom marketplace within a minute & put collective intelligence to work.

Distributed information. And you couldn’t find a way to sum it up.
You may now rest in the power of markets. On every single topic of your interest.

Markets bring people together, transmitting information through prices.
And askmarkets is the simplest way to put market power at your fingertips.

We offer you a one-stop, off-the-shelf solution.
Get your hands on now, your marketplace will be up and running in a minute.

Start now with a 30-day, full-fledged free trial. Then pay as you go.
No long-term contracts, no sign-up or termination fee, cancel at any time.

Managing your marketplace is simple, just like playing within it.
Customize it, add, edit or delete traders, markets and predictions in a few clicks, or less.

Starting today, you, your friends, colleagues and everyone else, are all very welcome to join us into our pride and joy, askmarkets. You may sign up right now, or get into directly via facebook connect, we ‘ve worked really hard to make this happen and we do hope you’ll like it.

Yes, but, you may wonder, why care? Here are few of the good reasons:

- It’s a game. Remember the joy of winning and the agony of losing? Above all, the pleasure of participating? They ‘re all there.

- It’s a bet. With the excitement of taking risks and watching them wither or flourish included.

- It’s a market. With accurate information, intelligence and strategy always prevailing.

- It’s easy. As in 1-2-3. Well, actually, it’s just 1-2.

- It’s fun. Tons of it. It’s in the game.

- And useful. More than useful. Incorporating all of the views and different opinions, in a single price.

Enough said. Time to go check it out for yourself. Watch the videos, learn much more about the core concept, or actually forget all these, go sign up and start playing/betting/trading. Remember, the real fun and value starts beyond the homepage. And it keeps growing.

You may also stay tuned, our solid enterprise offering will be out in the days to follow. And, please, be humble and quiet about that. Or, make some noise. After all, the point is, you know better.

At least on the outside it has, because inside we’ve been cooking up a bunch of new features and ironing out a few or more bugs. But, let me pre-empt your very probable question: No, we haven’t launched quite yet! 

Or have we? Well, at least for those of you who have already subscribed to askmarkets, we’ve now kind-of launched, as you can easily and quickly invite all of your friends! Just create a market or navigate to your profile to import your contact list from your gmail, yahoo or hotmail account and choose who you want to invite to play with you @ askmarkets.com! Because what goes for most things also is true for askmarkets: the more …. the merrier :)

And, if you haven’t received an invitation, but are really curious to check out askmarkets, just post here a comment to receive an invite, so simple!

Ah - and this is for all of you, subscribers or not – check out our new videos! It’s supposed to give you a better idea about what takes place behind the askmarket curtains. So, take a look and leave your comments, we really would like to hear from you! 

We also think it’s time to pay tribute to some people whose work has taken us a long way.

• i) David Pennock of Yahoo Research and his academic contributions for inspiring our research efforts
• ii) Inkling markets and their business model which revolutionized the way we think about markets services
• iii) Chris Masse of Midas Oracle for triggering our market instinct on a daily basis

Continuing the countdown till the launch, we’ll keep you posted!