The Empire Avenue Experience Part 1

As a starting note, I had three other blog topics in front of this one but I felt compelled  to move this post up the queue since I signed up for Empire Avenue. Maybe I’m still in the honeymoon faze or whatever you may call it but I believe Empire Avenue (EA) could be the next big thing in social media. I guess you could say I’m in an Empire State of Mind. I originally had this as one post but it was nearing 2000 words so now this is part one which will cover what is Empire Avenue and part two will cover why I think it could be the next bing thing.

If you aren’t familiar with Empire Avenue, you probably aren’t alone. In March of this year site had only 12,415 unique visitors and chances are you weren’t one of them. But it seems like Robert Scoble’s interview with Dups (the CEO of Empire Avenue, Duleepa Wijayawardhana) may have put EA on the map as Mr. Mashable himself, Pete Cashmore has signed up along many recognizable name brands.

So what is Empire Avenue? Many users including myself share the thought that EA is like a crowd sourced version of Klout. One tweet by Jeremiah Owyang offers another explanation – “Empire Avenue explained in 140 characters: It’s Farmville for Social Media”. While there are certainly social media and gaming elements, Empire Avenue is also a stock market for people.  Below is a screenshot of what a profile looks like:

After signing up I was a bit overwhelmed by all the features and different tabs available (more on that in part 2). It took me a few minutes to get my bearings as the learning curve seems to be quite steep for new users but I quickly learned that the community is extremely enthusiastic and willing to help (also more on that in part 2). Below are a few of the areas I focused on:

Your profile - The first step was to setup a profile and connect the various social networks to my EA account. A social network score is based on your interaction level within each social platform  (similar to Klout) which will be displayed on the right hand side of the screen.

This scoring process seems to happen in two phases. The first is quick and provides a guestimate to what a score might be. From what I’ve been told by community members, the second step takes up to five days for the algorithm to work itself out and for the question marks next to the scores to disappear. The fluctuation in network scores will reflect in your share price during this time.

Your share price will clearly be marked at the top of the page. Here is the description provided by EA:

“Your share price is your value on the web! It’s made up of what you do online (your activity), and each of your network scores. Most importantly, it’s influenced by Buying and Selling of your shares. As people buy, your share price will increase.”and there seems to be an initial rise in share value once the calculations are updated from yoursocial network score as long as you are somewhat socially active.”

I have recently learned that social network activity is measured over a two week span. This is done to provide people a long enough time period to socially interact while also taking into account breaks people take from the web.

The news feed tracks social activity (an aggregator of sorts) not only in EA but also on other connected services - Twitter, Facebook (personal and pages), Flickr, and Youtube. EA updates in the feed include newly unlocked badges, recent purchases, new shareholders of your stock, and comments (or shoutouts as they are called) posted in various places around EA. When I signed up, it seemed like a few courtesy investors purchased my stock as an introduction (nothing like an initial ego boost) which showed up in my feed.

Investing in other people (or companies) is another major component to the website. My first instinct was to look for my friends, twitter followers, and big names to see who’s on EA and what their stock prices were at as a barometer (turns out I’m not worth a whole lot at the moment). I bought a few stocks just to see what would happen and I then realized I had a limited currency. Not to worry though, there are many different ways to earn more Eaves as they are called. Unlocking badges, staying active on EA, and dividends on purchased stocks will earn you more EA moola. You can find people to invest in by using the search tab and looking for topics of interest or as I recently learned, looking at the leaders tab will allow you to sort through a variety of categories to find hot stocks.

As I was poking around the site, I noticed four or five chats popping up at the bottom of my screen (they reminded me of old school AOL chats a bit , A/S/L anyone?). I started talking to a few folks in a chat called “Noobies” or something of the like and ended up schmoozing two investors to buy some shares in me from a pure organic conversation…great! Now I did notice in some other chats people were pulling the old “i’ll buy shares in you if you buy shares in me”. At first I saw this as a cheap method to inflate share prices but this seemed to generate conversations and helped create new connections. It will be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out as the site gains in popularity.

I’m sure I’ve missed some features such as joining different communities based on location or interests and the shop where you can use real money to purchase Eaves among other things. There are a few other blogs I’ve discovered from active members in the community. Check out Caleb Storkey’s blog for a great perspective on EA and its stickyness (I’m not sure he’s been getting much sleep recently). He also mentioned that he was working on a post covering the many features on EA so I will be on the lookout for that. Another good blog I came across is Domino Oracle who’s written a few posts with his observations (ask him about #sharepricejuice and #SocialEmpire). Both Caleb and Domino Oracle are very involved on the website and are always willing to give a helping hand. Please check back for part 2 soon as I will be exploring why this matters to the social media landscape.