Truck and Barter

Here's an interesting new online market: S M A R K E T S :: Product Trading Market. You can buy and sell shares in products that are being sold on Amazon, much like you can trade shares on the future of innumerable things at TradeSports.

It's probably not all that interesting to suggest that the iPod Nano is going to be a stong seller. But if I were a book publisher I'd be keeping regular tabs on this page.

Of course, the lack of real money trading throws in some difficulties, but I think the experiment is fascinating. Since more people trading in these things always help make the experiment a little more robust, why not head over and make a few bets on the next big Amazon product sales.

(Side questions: does it make sense to allow users to write in product reviews before a product is even released? And if you're a seller, or an interested party (an author), would you want to allow or restrict reviews prior to official release? What signal do you send if you don't allow prior review?)