What’s new, different, gone and missing (short version)

So now that a few folks are messing around with the site, I should probably document some of the changes for you all, since I haven’t updated the copy of the site (yet). The biggest change you will find is that the ’sell’ button is gone and you no longer enter number so shares that you want to buy. Instead you enter the amount of money that you want to place into a ‘buy order’. The system then attempts to buy as many shares from the least expensive sellers that it can find. As a shareholder, you have to set a ’selling price’ for your shares.  This can be any amount that you want and you can change it whenever you want. There are a finite number of shares, and currently the system is defaulting to 10,000 for each thot.A new thing, is ‘advanced trading’. With this, you can place order to buy or change your selling price contingent on circumstances like a change in the trading price of a thot. At the moment that is the only trigger that is active, but shortly you will also be able to trigger advanced orders with changes in market cap. You set a duration for these orders and if the trigger does not occur, the order will expire. This way you can continue trading and making (or losing) money even when you’re not online. Stuff that’s gone: TAXES. there are no taxes in the system. CAPS. there aren’t caps (at least not like there used to be). You can pretty much set your prices to whatever you want within reason. But there is no penalty for ammassing huge sums of thollars in your bank account. FROZEN THOTS. thot don;t freeze anymore. From time to time trading might be paused on a thot pending an investigation of strangeness, but that should be (fingers crossed) rare. THOT MANAGERS. no more thot managers or hostile takeovers.  There’s more, but I’m really tired. I’ll be discussing a lot more about the motivations for all the changes in future posts. Also there are technical changes that might be interesting to some.PLEASE let me know what you think. It’s all a bit different than before, and I’m anxious to know if you find it to be: harder/easier, more/less fun, etc. Also, when corresponding, please let me know if you participated in the first public beta last fall or if you are new. Oh, one more thing…This new market does away with the whole ’simulator’ algorithm thing. Fluctuations, prices and all that are now directly driven by the shareholders. That means that the overall experience (i.e. enjoyment) of the site now heavily depends on numbers of people driving those changes. The site will fail if it doesn’t cross some tipping point of traffic. So, if you enjoy it and see an opportunity to bring new poeple in, please do so, for your own sake (and mine too). Thanks everyone. I hope this works.  -Steve

Doors will open at 1:08am eastern time

I’m going to ring the bell and open the door tonight. Not everything is done, but you’re welcome to stop by take a look and try some stuff out.The email blast wont go out until Monday, so things will probably be calm for a few days. But if you want to get started early I’ll see you at 1:08.

It’s getting close (really)

Thanks to everyone who has sent supportive feedback in response to the announcement that ThotMarket will be making a return to the public in February. It’s really gratifying to see that there is still interest in this thing and that we won’t have to start from scratch (trying to build up a user base). That last point is especially important, given the new market mechanism (more on that later). Suffice it to say, I believe that the new system has eliminated all the major sources of inflation that kept causing the economy to go nuts in the first public beta. The only way to know for sure is to release it into the wild and see what a large group can make of it. 

So, some things have changed, some things are gone, and there’s some new stuff as well. The story behind what has transpired since the site went away is one that will be told as the year progresses. If thotmarket takes off again, there is some extremely cool stuff on the horizon.When I pulled the site down, I stated that I believed there was no point in having the site at all, if it didn’t work. ThotMarket was down much longer than I anticipated because it took that long to build something I that think will work. But, things are looking good, and we are probably days away from the launch of Public Beta 2.  The site will turn on and shortly afterward a blast email will go out notifying everyone who opted in. If you had a user account in Beta 1, you can still use it to log in. There is a mechanism to reset a forgotten password if you entered an email into the system originally. Otherwise you are welcome to create a new account. 

 

Beta 2 is a clean start. That means none of the thots and none of the thollars from beta 1 will be carried over. I think you will find that it is a lot harder to make money this time. Of course, if I learned one thing from the first round, it was to never underestimate the general public when they are motivated.  The fundamental change is that the site no longer uses a market simulation to set stock prices. Those prices are now determined directly by the shareholders. It’s actually a real market now, although with fake money. What this looks like and how it works will be the topic of much discussion in upcoming posts. 

 See you soon!