I’ve been trying out this new Empire Avenue thing.
It’s a marketplace for individuals’ influence. What happens is you set up a profile, then other users buy “shares” in someone with virtual money. Theoretically, this identifies the individuals who are the most influential, which will be useful information someday for advertisers, who may at some point want to actually invest in influencers to reach targeted audiences.
In the Beta, what I noticed is that people who knew each other invest in other people they knew. It was kind of a popularity contest. In the Edmonton Twitter scene, there is a group of people who know each other, on and offline, and these are the ones who did the best. I did OK, topping out at around $16 a share. The most desirable people traded at upwards of $30.
EA rewards you for being active online, so every time you post on Twitter or Facebook or make a blog entry, you get “paid.” For best results, you link to your accounts. So basically, if you are on social networking a lot, you get rewarded, regardless of what you post. I’m not sure how to feel about this.
I like social networking. I’m basically on it all day, since I work from home and do semi-creative work. A FB break every 10 minutes is nice when I’m brainstorming. But I keep my privacy settings high, and try not to share sensitive information. My level of activity is scaled to the amount of public accessibility: I’m most active and candid on Facebook, a little less so on my blog, and even less so on Twitter. Unfortunately, Empire Avenue wants me to change that. No dice, EA. If you really want the goods, you have to meet me in person.
Another weird thing is the market aspect of it. I’m not a die-hard capitalist, so it’s hard for me to quantify the value of my relationships to a number. At the beginning, I was a little sad that people weren’t buying my stock. Eventually, they did (I’m a slow dazzler!) but it was kind of masochistic seeing the numbers change hour to hour. I’m pretty uncomfortable with the concept of a marketplace for people generally, and especially when no one really makes an effort to get to know who they’re buying into. Most don’t send messages, and some don’t even bother putting up bios! It’s the least relationship-building social networking site I’ve been on. No one’s gonna be making new friends from this, which is sad.
There are interesting things about it for me, though. We are allowed to buy ads, which was where things got fun for me. Most people write a sell: “I’m trading low, so buy into X stock!” But I find that sad. Real advertising is creative and tells you something about what you’re buying. So I bought a lot of ads– PSA’s, more like, reminding people to floss at night. Things people can use. I doubt it helped, but seriously– it’s a great place to test drive your marketing know-how to see what gets click-throughs and what doesn’t. An ad I did that said simply, “Pay Attention!” actually worked. And the weird thing is that others are now copying my style of advertising. Flattering!
They’ve opened up the system a bit to more users, so if you want to be invited in, let me know. But be forewarned: it’s a little obnoxious.