Syracuse University student entrepreneurs are making their mark, and the latest to do that is PsyQic.
PsyQic, which allows users to share predictions on sports, politics, TV shows, movies, business, science, environment, technologies and more, is now available for iOS devices (iPhone and iPod Touch) on the iTunes App Store. A team of current and former Syracuse University students founded the company, PsyQic Inc., in April.
The free app lets users compete with others and establish themselves as experts (“PsyQics”) of certain subjects. The application calculates users’ “Qi” scores, which represents their predictive abilities based on the accuracy of their predictions. Users then get ranked on a leaderboard by their “Qi.”
“If you look at the spectrum of social media today, most are about what people are doing now or what they have done in the past. PsyQic introduces the ‘social prediction,’ where people can share projections and discuss the future,” says Keisuke Inoue, co-founder, president and lead developer of PsyQic.
PsyQic provides users with a list of questions about the future and then verifies the outcome, alerting users of how accurately they predicted.
Key features of the new PsyQic app include:
• Browse questions about the future
• Make predictions and share them with others
• View how other people are predicting
• Compete with others on Qi scores
• Ask questions about the future
• Learn more about future events
• Find out what happened with previous predictions
“By combining user predictions, their history of predictions and other behavioral attributes, PsyQic’s machine learning system will come up with the best estimation of a future event,” Inoue says.
PsyQic is also designed to inform users about important upcoming events and concerns. It provides suggested reading so that users become better predictors and thus encourages media consumption.
The app requires iOS 5.0 or later and a Facebook account.
PsyQic has won early recognition, including the Goldberg Prize in Technology and Innovation at SU’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management’s 2012 Panasci Business Plan Competition, second prize at the New York State Business Plan Competition and Syracuse University’s Raymond von Dran IDEA Award. PsyQic is based in Syracuse and was part of the 2012 class of the IDEA Student Sandbox business incubator.
