A few weeks ago, I was inspired to join Empire Avenue after reading a post about it on Ari Herzog’s blog. Herzog piqued my curiosity about this influence-as-a-stock-market-game, and I figured I might as well check it out so I could at least tell you what it is all about.
My, my, my, what an insidious creation.
I had heard it was similar to Klout, a social media rating system that attempts to comprehend the extent of your online influence. Empire Avenue (EAv) allows you to connect your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and YouTube accounts and up to five blogs. It then monitors your activity on all these platforms and uses this activity to assign your stock price.
Sounds like a good thing, right?
It’s a game.
Did I mention the game? Instead of having people follow or friend you, on EAv people buy stock in you. You start out with a stock market price of 10 eaves, and that price rises or falls based on your social media activity and the number of people invested in you. If you run out of eaves, no problem, you can use real money to buy some more.
I know what you’re thinking, That’s just silly, that’s not insidious.
Go ahead and sign up and let me know in a couple of weeks if you’re still so sure it’s just silly. Before EAv I had never played a game on Facebook. Not one. In fact, I was immune to the entire Internet gaming phenomenon. Now, I’m checking my status every day.
It’s a social media platform.
EAv is also its own social media platform. You can share statuses, you can chat, you can set up communities and converse in threaded messages, and always someone is shouting, Buy me, buy me.
On the rise
When you sign up for EAv, it starts monitoring your social media activity and you unlock achievements based on what EAv learns about your interactions. People you’ve never met will invest in you (they know it’s a pretty sure bet your value will rise above 10 eaves), and your stock price starts climbing.
With little effort, my stock price rose above 43 eaves within 6 days.
Starting to fall
After about a week, your price starts fluctuating. Stockholders decide that you have peaked and they bail on you. Suddenly you have to work at maintaining your stock price, and by this time you have begun to care about your score.
If you are concerned about how a falling stock price might appear to others, you might find yourself visiting several times a day. You might even join the crowd who resort to creating superficial conversations to drive up their value.
Fortunately, EAv recently added a spam button to hide some of that noise and devalue spam comments.
Is Empire Avenue Worth It?
In your first few weeks on Empire Avenue, you will likely connect with people outside your usual networks. As a new platform, EAv has an intimate feel. You can connect more deeply with people when you are sifting through less noise than on your usual streams. Some of those new people will visit your blogs and engage with your links, so that is all good.
However, you have to have a plan in place to manage your time, and you have to understand how committed you want to be to a score that fluctuates on the whims of your stockholders.
By the way, you may find the site loads slowly – if so, you can turn off chatting. This was my biggest complaint with the site until I turned off the chat function.
You also have to understand that, like any other social media scoring system, an Empire Avenue stock price can be manipulated by low quality, high quantity activity. I am particularly concerned about the money factor. I understand they have make money somehow, but I am not comfortable with the idea that you can buy eaves and then use those eaves to elevate what purports to be an influence score. Even though that is true of anything in life (that is, money buys influence), this taints the impartiality of the score in my mind.
What about you?
Are you on Empire Avenue? I would love to hear what you think of its value for you and your business.
As a proud player of Empire Avenue, I must say that I have seen my active visitors to my blog triple since joining their site. I’m not sure exactly how all of their numbers get crunched, but my visibility has never been greater! Perhaps I spend too much time there, but with such results, who cares!?
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Thanks for stopping by Brian. I have definitely felt a bump in my blog views.
LOL Brian, I love your comment.
Tammi, 2 things, 1st a suggestion: make the Ari Herzog’s blog link open in a new tab, so you keep your readers’ attention, they can glance at Ari’s then close that tab and voilà! they’re back here.
2nd, I like your very informative blog post, especially the bit about closing the chat, cause my only complaint is the slowness of loading. I do try to post on the chat to get investors, but I now first write my post in notepad then copy it in the chat, else, FireFox almost freezes. I’m not sure it’s worth it to invite chatters to invest, but I see it often, and I’ve joined only 3 days ago.
Thanks for the info about the fluctuating share price, it will help give it less attention and concentrate on interactions and content, and on building business relationships, cause that’s what I’m there for.
Philippe
Awesome comments from both Philippe and Brian. Loved this very detailed blog, also inspired me to post a how to in order to provide my link on EA, clever.
As far as stock price stability, I am a firm believer that you can maintain a consistent audience if you build slow and steady. I have used EA to engage deeper with existing friends across networks, it is a great guide to remind me when I have not been active enough similar to Klout, and I have met some great people and gotten a lot of support for my blogs, and other social sites. Just like every other trend the phonies, and fly by not trend seekers won’t last. The faithful see results, maybe not quickly but deeper and more lasting.
What’s not to like?
~Andrea Raquel
Bx=SugarFree
Well said, Andrea.
My experience was that I racked up a decent score without really trying at first, so it was a rude awakening when the numbers started dropping and I had to add EAv activity to the mix.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Philippe. That chat feature was just an annoyance for me. I am so much happier now that I turned it off.
I agree that relationships should trump social media scores.
Excellent summary. I do like EA but I find myself backing away because it can be so time consuming. HOWEVER, it has forced me to step up my Social Media game, learn more, and I’ve met some fantastic people in the groups who have provided invaluable support and expertise. I think the scoring is more relevant to me than Klout since it takes more social media platforms into account, though I suspect it’s more likely for others to check my Klout score than EA score.
Hi Kirsten,
Thanks for stopping here and commenting. I have enjoyed connecting with you over in the EAv writing community.
I think it is very important to have a social media strategy in place. I advise writers to block out the amount of time they want to spend on social media activities and then adjust their strategy to fit that time commitment. Obviously, the more time you spend, the more connections you make, the higher your scores, etc. But at some point we have to be actually producing something and not just chatting.
I would like you to keep up the good work.You know how to make your post understandable for most of the people.I will definitely share it with others.Thanks for sharing.
Playing Social Media game is one way to have a great bond of friendship. It just like telling your friend that there are things and games you agree with. And yes it really help getting a lot of visitors for my blog too. Isn’t it amazing?
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Thank you for recommending EAv, Tammi! I am excited to start my conquest in piling up those eaves,haha! Can’t wait to recommend it to my friends too.
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This is really a good review. I would want to try Empire Avenue. This might be new for the many, including myself. Based on this review, Empire Avenue is quite interesting especially on the part where you create stock values and all. For bloggers, another important feature is that you can display you can share your blogs and eventually invite more visitors.
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Well there is no harm in trying, let’s take a look on Empire Avenue and wait for my comment, though I don’t have to dwell on it much. I have to do a lot of catching about blog making and that includes you, I like your title their “Write more, write fast, write now”
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I have never really tries Empire Avenue, i have used Klout a little but cant say whether i have been benefited out of it or not, lest see what Empire Avenue holds for me!
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i absolutely agree to this post it is very interesting one and i think the scoring is more relevant to me than Klout since it takes more social media platforms into account, though I suspect it’s more likely for others to check my Klout score than EA score.
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Hi Tammi,
Nice post.I heard first time about empire avenue hope it will work for me as well.
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