Be right or wrong with the crowds: ZiiTrend

There are several ways to make educated guesses about upcoming events. The first is to the analyst's approach, which requires keeping track of trends, and looking at past history. The second, slightly more intensive way to do it is to compile evidence, and other people's opinions, to figure out what's happening next on an aggregate level: be it a video game plotline, political action, or strategic move by a company. ZiiTrend is a new site that falls somewhere in the middle, putting the wisdom of the crowds to work in a system that lets users test out their analyst skills at the judgment of the community.

The concept is fairly straightforward: if you have a prediction, just submit it to the site, and the ZiiTrend community votes on it. Submitting your idea to the site is a little bit like Digg, just plug in your idea, send it off, and it'll show up in an upcoming pool for other users to vote on. The most active and popular predictions make the front page, where they're given the lime lite.

So what sets ZiiTrend apart from other idea sharing sites? ZiiTrend actually lets you go back after an event closes (a time set up by whoever submits the prediction), and say what really happened, turning the service into more of a repository of answers rather than just guesses. Users can also add related links to a prediction to add context, or add more to the original post in the form of a related Wiki entry. The result is an enjoyable exploratory experience that's definitely worth a look.

If you're into predictive social services, you should also check out Trendio (review), which lets you make predictions on words, and play them in a virtual stock market.

Related: Did you hear...Truemors doesn't suck

Think you've got a good prediction? Play it out at ZiiTrend, and see what other users think of it.

(Credit: CNET Networks)