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Empire Avenue – Why you shouldn’t delete your account
One of the reasons I’ve seen people give for leaving Empire Avenue is that they weren’t going to be active online for a while and didn’t want their stock price to crash and ruin their friend’s portfolios. While this shows their admirable character, they really shouldn’t worry. Stock prices don’t really crash from low activity. I don’t know the details behind the scenes (I still have not met the mathemagics entity who controls Empire Avenue) but there is a stabilization effect that comes into play. If I haven’t met the entity, how do I know this, you ask? Simple. It happens to me all the time. I have spurts of…
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Project Healing Waters
Through some folks I’ve met on Empire Avenue I’ve learned of “Project Healing Waters / Trout Unlimited Edmonton Dinner & Auction” From their website: Your support of the 2010 Northern Lights Auction and Dinner supports the Cold Water Conservation initiatives of Trout Unlimited Edmonton Chapter in addition to providing the dedicated funding necessary to provide the Healing Waters program to our clients. PHWFFC clients are comprised of Canadian Forces Soldiers as well as civilians who are suffering severe physical injury or Post Traumatic Stress and are looking for alternative methods for rehabilitation. I can’t attend as this coincides with the Pure Speculation convention but I thought I’d post this in…
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Life After the Sell Out
So I’ve been an influencer on Empire Avenue since it started and last week I finally sold out, introducing me to the next phase of the game. (To put this sell out in context many people who hit the leaderboards sell out in a few weeks or less, took me a few months to reach this milestone). In Empire Avenue you start out with 10 000 shares that other people can buy. Once they are sold, no one else can buy you until you purchase an upgrade to release more shares (2500 additional shares at at time). I had always assumed that once I sold out that would be it,…
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Empire Avenue – Why I sell you
If you are on Empire Avenue you might wonder why people sell your stocks. Other than the obvious sell-off that happens a few days after a newbie joins there are other reasons why I will dump someone’s stock. Missed a Day If an influencer misses a day of activity (that is if for one day or more they generate no nightly dividends for me) I sell. The exception to this is if I have previously exchanged messages or otherwise know the person. Then I am a bit more patient and will suffer a day or two of losses. I also generally cut people slack on the weekend. Offensive If someone’s…
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Empire Avenue – Why my share price drops
Many newcomers who race up the leaderboard get shocked a week or so later when they begin to plummet. Don’t Panic! Others have posted on this but I thought tossing out another post explaining as far as I understand it, the market mechanics and why this happens, might help alleviate concern. Here goes: Because share price is mixture of online activity and people’s interest (i.e., buying shares) in you if either tapers off your share price will drop. Newcomers who are active online get onto the recent arrival leaderboards. AND THEN EVERYONE BUYS THEM! They shoot up the leaderboards. AND EVERYONE SELLS THEM! And because their share price is so…
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Empire Avenue — Communities
At the risk of turning this blog into an Empire Avenue fansite I’ll venture another post about the ‘ave. A new feature came out with the latest update to Empire Avenue — communities. This allows users to create and join groups of likeminded influencers in such realms as videogames, books, writing, or whatever else tickles their fancy. As Adriel Hampton recently discussed on his blog these communities are the chance for people to get in early on Empire Avenue and carve out an area of expertise. Basically be the dominant dog in whatever interests in them before Empire Avenue goes mainstream. In the first run of the Empire Avenue beta…
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Birth of a social network – Empire Avenue
It has now been several months since I first started participating in the beta for Empire Avenue. I was a latecomer to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter so I’ve never really been in the position of watching a network unfold before. Just watching the newcomers list and seeing where they are signing in from has been kind of fun as the network grew out of Edmonton and Montreal and spread all over the place — many users in the States and overseas now. (p.s at some point I’d love to see a time-lapse video showing the spread). What’s been good Since share value is determined by online activity I am more…
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Quick Empire Avenue Comments
It has been interesting watching the growth of Empire Avenue over the last few months. I started in the first beta when it first opened up and now as people are able to invite others to join, its growing at a nice pace. Everyday I find new and interesting ‘content’ whether that be people’s blogs or twitter chains. Also I enjoy their achievement system. For example, a week or so they had their 1000th user join and had a contest to ‘discover’ the newcomer and everyone who did so was rewarded with an achievement. More recently they had a contest in which the CEO of the company had to wear…
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Black Gate has arrived!
Received issue 14 of Black Gate and have started reading it. The magazine is a print magazine but given the expense of using the postal system, I elected to continue my subscription via PDF. So far happy with it. Formatting is good, I’ll test it on a variety of devices and give an update later. In other news, I had a solid weekend on Empire Avenue… my share price continues to increase. If you’d like an invite into this addictive game/social network/advertising platform, just let me know (I’ll need an e-mail address to invite you).
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Board of Directors anyone?
Since I’ve retired from a dayjob I’ve been supporting myself a bit with my writing but primarily through stock and fund investments (the realworld kind, not the Empire Avenue kind). One aspect of owning stock that I hadn’t thought much about before actually owning shares in a company was the board of directors. Now I regularly get literature from the companies I own stock in, discussing their upcoming plans and often, nominations for new members of their boards of directors. As part of this process they disclose the money and incentives that members of the board receive. And wow, do some of them make a boatload of money. And by…
