A prediction market for shortform content

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For years, college students Nelson Bellows and Abbi Park noticed how TikTok and Instagram Reels users would comment predictions on videos about how they thought they would perform. Users would comment things like, “investing at 200 likes” or “this is getting over 1m views” below content that would often become very popular.

So, this fall, the two teamed up at a Harvard hackathon to build a product that would allow the commenters dreams to become reality. Bellows and Park built Spike, which brings prediction markets to short form video content. Users can go on the app and bet on whether certain TikToks will hit different milestones.