Hello Empire Avenue community! Nick the Intern here, and I thought today I could share a couple of things I have learned from Empire Avenue so far.

The first thing I learned is that I work with a bunch of very pleasant and helpful people, and this isn’t only regarding the Empire Avenue staff . The community at large on Empire Avenue is a very kind, and supportive one. From conversational comments on blog posts to people helping each other in the Empire Avenue community, it has all been really great to see.

Another thing that I never knew is just how wide a range of activity there is on Empire Avenue. There are businesses, not for profit organizations, artists, entrepreneurs and more! I never know what sort of new or interesting people I’m going to meet when I log on, and it is always exciting when I find a Mission, or a person that I want to invest time (and Eaves) in.

I’m also finding myself participating much more in the Empire Avenue Stock Market. Learning about the variety of people on Empire Avenue is its own reward, but watching my value climb as I am investing and being invested in is quite satisfying as well.

While I have only been here a short while, I feel like I have learned quite a bit about Empire Avenue’s community and systems. What have you learned about Empire Avenue? Is there anything else I should be aware of? Feel free to leave a comment below or email me at nick@empireavenue.com.

Nick the Intern here and today I am in interested in how you’ve invested!

I have been spending more time on the Social Stock Market, and I have been curious about how the Empire Avenue community networks through playing the Stock Market. I thought for this blog I would try something a little bit different and share my current investing strategy, and ask you to do the same in the comments below, or in the discussion about this blog post in the Empire Avenue General Discussion Community.

The first thing that I do every day is to invest in profiles who invest in me. Even if I cannot match their investment, I invest what I can. Everybody receives some benefit through investment, and it is a good way for me to start recognizing familiar faces in the community not to mention discover some new ones!

My second strategy is to invest in new profiles, or profiles that seem to share similar interests, or goals. My reasoning here is because I like helping people who are new to Empire Avenue, and I like finding those who share my interests.

Well, this is a short blog post, but then that’s generally what I do. To be honest I am more interested in learning from you! Leave your thoughts on how you invest in the Social Stock Market below or in the Empire Avenue General Discussion Community!

Thanks for reading, and happy investing!

Active members of the Empire Avenue community might have noticed that very suddenly we have a Pinterest channel, an official Tumblr channel, a re-introduced Instagram channel and maybe some more activity on our Facebook Page… what’s going on you might ask!

As you know, Empire Avenue is filled with some of the most amazing and engaged Social Media members. Many in our community help companies and individuals with their Social Media presence. We’ve long realized that our small team cannot manage all our presences while giving you an experience on Empire Avenue. Since we often extol the virtues of using Empire Avenue as a marketplace with individuals and companies that can help you realize the value of your networks, we decided to swallow our own medicine.

This month, we’ve turned to the team at Monopolize Social Media (MSM) to help expand and manage our presence in many of our Social Media channels. So stay tuned folks, we’re going to have fun.

Who’s MSM you might ask, here’s a short blurb!

“Monopolize Social Media (MSM) delivers services that are tough to match by any other source which all started with an idea in mind to not only penetrate social networks but take over and drive traffic in force while building a brand for clients. Founded by Justin Matthew and Chris Cota (ATLCOMPUTERDUDE) the team has achieved top honours on every social network including Empire Avenue! Justin has been a leader in innovation and pioneer in social media on nearly every network and is well known as (JMHHACKER) from his YouTube days as business manager of top channel HouseHoldHacker. Everything you know about marketing, advertising, and social media has now evolved! Justin Matthew, Chris Cota, Adam Houlahan, Barbara Fariña, Daniel Stock, Dan Tulloh, Karen Michelle and Brittany Cruz are the team that makes it all happen! MSM Team Page. http://www.monopolizesocialmedia.com/site-pages/meet-the-team“

We’re excited to have MSM work with us on this endeavour. We hope to showcase many of our great Empire Avenue Community members, their work and their companies in the upcoming weeks and months. Not only might we promote your services, create mentorship opportunities for you but, as with MSM, use your services to help us grow Empire Avenue’s presence as we continue on our path towards accomplishing our mission!

Hello Empire Avenue Community! I’m back with a few words about the “Discover” section of Empire Avenue, and how it can improve your Empire Avenue experience!

The first thing you are going to see when you click on “Discover” is your Dashboard. The Dashboard is a great place to start as it immediately pops up profiles with similar network scores across the social networks you have connected, as well as Empire Avenue itself. By connecting you with other Empire Avenue members of a similar skill level, we believe that you will have common ground to interact with each other. New members can connect and learn the various systems of Empire Avenue from their peers, while more advanced members can identify others’ successes and incorporate them into their own strategies.

The Recent Arrivals tab shows you just that: Recent Arrivals on the Empire Avenue Stock Market. These are the “fresh-faced” profiles of people just getting started. A common strategy amongst the Empire Avenue Stock Market community is to invest in these profiles while their share price is low, and as these Recent Arrivals become more familiar with Empire Avenue and it’s various systems, their Dividends are bound to increase, and everybody benefits! You can also view the Recent Arrivals Leaders in the Stock Market area which shows the Fresh Faces who are steadily rising through the Empire Avenue ranks. If you are looking for good new connections and investments, the Recent Arrivals tab is a good place to start!

Network Leaders shows you how people on Empire Avenue are faring across their connected social media profiles. From Twitter to Facebook, to People and Businesses you can see how people are utilizing Social Media around the world and even break it down by top leaders in your country! By allowing you to see how people are succeeding across a variety of social platforms, you can learn how to enhance your own pages.

This may not be news to everyone, but the Discover tab has multiple uses, and can greatly improve your time on Empire Avenue. As with everything, it all depends on how you use it, and what your personal goals on Empire Avenue are. If you are looking to expand and grow your networks across any of the social media networks we connect as well as Empire Avenue itself, Discover is definitely the place to start. For the competitive and goal-oriented maybe seeing how many spots you need to climb before cracking the leaders in the Social Media world,will be just what the doctor ordered. How do you use the Discover tab and how can we make it better?

Hello once again Empire Avenue Community! Nick the Intern here, and today I have a few thoughts about Communities on Empire Avenue.

Communities are a great way to begin your Empire Avenue journey, and their value only increases as you spend more time on Empire Avenue, so I thought I would talk about the advantages of Communities for those first starting on Empire Avenue, and the advantages for those who are a little more seasoned.

For a beginner, Communities can be a great way to start connecting with other Community members. When trying to find viable networking opportunities, knowing the types of interests and goals held by other people is helpful in attempting to build a meaningful network, and Communities are where members wear their interests and goals on their sleeves! Similarly to Missions, you can scroll through the various Communities at your own pace, or you can use the search bar and hone in on the exact type of Community you are after. There are many active Communities on Empire Avenue, and it’s just a matter of finding the ones that you want to be a part of!

For you more seasoned members Communities can be utilized not only as a networking booster, but also as an opportunity to interact with your current network. If your network is strong you can feasibly create a Community specifically for your network, and use it to easily communicate your various Empire Avenue activities (such as your current Missions).

Whether you are a Fresh Faced member, an Empire Avenue “Master” or somewhere in between, the power of Communities is undeniable. If you are looking to build your network, or even just want to kick back and discuss Backyard Chickens with the wonderful people of Empire Avenue, you need look no further than the Communities section.

Feel free to leave comments below about some of your favorite Communities, and how being a part of one has helped to improve your Empire Avenue experience. If you want to communicate directly with the Empire Avenue staff, join the Empire Avenue General Discussion Community, we wear Empire Avenue proudly on our sleeves in there!

Greetings Empire Avenue! Nick the Intern is back with a tip that may help you drive successful completions of your Missions.

As we know, Missions are one of the core aspects of Empire Avenue when it comes to increasing social media activity, and building your network. In my brief time with Empire Avenue I have seen my fair share of highly successful Missions that have led to great networking opportunities for the creators, and I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the things I have noticed which have led to highly successful Missions.

The first thing that anyone sees when looking at your Mission is the title. You want to make sure that your title is unique and concise, while also giving people an enticing taste of exactly what you want them to do. Scratch that. You want to show them something that THEY want to do. Try and convey the value that they will get from networking with you other than an Eaves payment. This will lead to more people checking out your Missions because they are genuinely interested.

An example of a bad Mission title is something like “5,000 Eaves for Liking our Facebook Page”. There is no enticement to the community except for the basic Eave reward, and there is not enough information or value there for Engagement seekers to give the Mission a second glance. People looking for Eaves may complete it, but people searching for true engagement will most likely move on to something more unique.

In order to reach out to those who are truly looking to engage, you need to convey the value of your Mission. A Mission title like “Network With Business Professionals on Our Facebook Page” shows the community that the value of the Mission isn’t just a one way street, and that there is a real opportunity here for them. Create opportunities for the community.

This also applies to your Mission Description, except this is the part where you can expand on your goals, and add even more value to your Mission. By properly communicating the intention behind your Mission, and explaining how there is more value for the “completionist” in attaining these goals with you on top of the Eaves reward.

For example, this is what I would consider a “not so great” Mission description:

“ *****ATTENTION ALL EAVES THIEVES IF YOU BE STEALING MY EAVES YOU WILL BE REPORTED AND PERMABLOCKED FROM ALL OF MY FUTURE MISSIONS. THIS IS A SERIOUS WARNING TO ALL OF YOU AND YOU HAD BETTER HEED IT OR YOU WILL BE REPORTED AND PERMABLOCKED AS MENTIONED ABOVE!!!!!!!!!*****

Go on my WordPress page and just click around or something! Thanks! “

General tip, if your warning to people stealing your Eaves is longer than your Mission Description, you should rethink it. People don’t really like being considered “thieves” before they even get a chance to read your Mission, and switching on a dime from telling a community off, to then asking them for something seems counterproductive. Also, just telling people to explore your social networking pages without providing them with any reason, or in fact what you are even trying to accomplish with your social networks, is a very quick way for your Mission to be mentally pushed aside, and lumped in with other vague Missions.

I suggest taking an approach like this:

“Hello my fellow Eavers!

Do you like baking? My name is Nick Cratchett and I have been baking for 25 years! I feel as though I have learned a lot with my time in the kitchen, and I’d like to take this opportunity to share what I have learned with you!

Every Wednesday I post a new recipe on my WordPress blog  and I would love to connect with you, and share my love of baking. This week I am trying something new and exciting, an online bake sale! Anybody visiting my website can pick from my selected recipes (not all of them unfortunately, mailing a cake is difficult) and for the low price of 10 dollars I will bake, and send them to you!

Here is where YOU come in. I am hoping to get a little more exposure for my sale, and if you tweet out a link to my sale page, not only will you be helping my bake sale, and gaining Eaves, but I will cut my price of 10 dollars down to 5 for any Eaver who completes my Mission. Thank you for your continued support, and remember to encourage that sweet tooth! ”

Now I bet you wish this Mission was real don’t you? Not only was he clear with his goals and intentions, but he worked to add value to the Mission beyond the standard Eave reward. he informed people of his website, and it’s purpose, so anybody with similar interests is   
bound to connect. He even put in the extra effort to add an additional tangible benefit on top of the traditional Eave reward, while this isn’t necessary, it is good way to make your Mission stand out from the crowd.

One thing that I have heard tell of is people who have had many successful Missions in the past, but are finding it hard to keep that momentum. One way to keep the momentum going is to avoid “Mission Repetition”. People on Empire Avenue may be good for completing a “retweet this tweet for 5,000 eaves” a few times, but eventually I feel that they will be looking for more out of their Empire Avenue experience. Try and keep your Missions varied, and if you are just focused on one particular type of social network activity (i.e retweets) then try and explain your intentions behind why you want this tweet seen so badly instead of just asking for it.

Missions are a tool, and like any tool wielding it can prove to be difficult, but I feel that by trying to stand out from the crowd, clearly communicating your goals, and avoiding “Mission Repetition”  you can turn your Missions from being a quick grab for Eaves, into true engagement and networking opportunities.

[UPDATED: We are now looking at a window around June 10th as we run more simulations on our changes!]

Okay Empire Avenue Community… this is going to be a big update.

We have not made substantial changes to how Share Prices are calculated or Earnings and Dividend calculations for over two years. In the next week we will change many of our “Market Makers”. There is no easy or small way to do this, it will affect everyone and we will do all the changes in one go.

What is the process currently?

1. Every night a set of algorithms (named John Locke and so on) called “Market Makers” examine your Social Media activity and engagement (including your actions on Empire Avenue) as well as the trading of Shares on the Empire Avenue Stock Market and sets your Share Price.

2. We then go through and pay out Earnings to you and Dividends to your Shareholders from you.

What are we changing?

The changes we will implement encompass all our Market Makers and the Dividend and Earnings calculations.

1. We will start fixing what data we use for your social media activity and engagement to a specific time range.  Currently we are using a rolling time window from when your specific profile gets processed, which can cause small earnings/dividend fluctuations from day to day.  Even though some days are longer ranges and some are shorter, the net-effect however currently does cover your appropriate range.  Going forward we will be using a specific set of times where your the ‘day’ will start and end, with regards to our calculations.  The initial timeframe will be 01:00:00 UTC, in a ‘>=’ and ‘<’ arrangement, using the remote-network ‘posted’ time.  So for example if you post something to Twitter at 00:59:59 UTC on a given day, it will count towards that day’s calculations…  If you post it at 01:00:00 UTC it will be counted towards the next day.

2. We will remove blogs entirely from Earnings, Dividends and Share Price calculations. At this point they are so minor in how much count for Earnings/Dividends/Share Price that this change is immaterial but we want to disclose our changes as much as possible .  Blogs/RSS will remain as a connection for you to showcase links to your content on your profile.

3. Inconsistencies across all the Market Makers will be fixed — these are internal inconsistencies and we cannot reveal them specifically but it will mean that adding new connections will be a bit easier in the future.

4. We will change our Empire Avenue specific Earnings. This is for activity and engagement on Empire Avenue itself. More emphasis will be placed on reputation of your engagement, especially on missions and any other feature we release in the future that uses reputation as a mechanic. Those that have a high reputation — as much as we can measure — will earn more in earnings and pay more in dividends.

5. We will adjust all Dividends and Earnings to reduce the impact of activity that generates little engagement. Instead, as always, we will continue to enhance the rewards for engagement from others on the content you create.

Why are we doing this?

1. Many of the APIs and the data we are able to collect have changed over the preceding 18 months.

2. We have seen some inconsistencies between Network Market Makers and we wish to address them.

3. We want to stabilize our daily close inputs so that there are less questions on what is being used and when, and more transparency so you can understand which content was used for which ‘day’.

4. Many in the Community have asked us for more transparency and understanding in Share Prices, Dividends and Earnings. While this update may not immediately give you that transparency it will set the stage for it in the future.

What will be the likely effect?

1. The first day will likely have the largest impact, primarily due to the rollback in time from somewhere between 08:00 and 10:00 UTC back to the new 01:00 UTC for an day-ends date.  It is less data, true, however we will have an opportunity to ensure all data is collected between 01:00 UTC and when the close process begins.  This is the biggest change, where content you created the day before we do this will count for that close, and not the next day.  During this first day will also be included the Empire Avenue activity changes, and other tweaks, pokes, and prods here and there.

2. The second day will be closer to the calculations that will happen from the change onwards. However since we calculate averages across multiple days to ensure fairness, between the second and seventh day there will still be small variations – these variations will decrease in their severity with each day.

3. This will affect *everyone* in some manner.  Whether you will actually notice it depends on your usage behavior and what times during the day you actually posted on any given network, and how consistent you are.

When will this happen?

1. We are currently anticipating these changes to take place as early as next week, approximately June 4th 2013.

2. We will post updates in the Empire Avenue General Community Discussion as well as via a newsletter on the day that the changes are applied. Please sign up for our Newsletter and/or keep an eye out on the Empire Avenue General Community Discussion to ensure you receive the most up to date information.

Greetings Empire Avenue community! My name is Nicholas Hovencamp, and I recently began as a Communications Intern for Empire Avenue. I’m hoping to share my thoughts on all things Empire Avenue, as well as trying to share how you can utilize Empire Avenue’s systems to provide meaningful growth to your network. I also want to learn from our more seasoned community members!

One of the defining features of Empire Avenue is the ability to create, and complete Missions. By creating Missions you can increase activity across your social networks, and by completing missions you can gain Eaves, but have you ever thought about the other benefits?

There are many different types of people using Empire Avenue, and finding someone with similar goals, or interests to your own isn’t difficult. You can spend your time looking through the Missions page, or for a more direct approach, you can use the Missions Search bar to find exactly who you are looking for through searching for Mission content. Missions make finding like-minded people who want to network easier.

We all know that completing missions will gain you Eaves, but you also gain the opportunity to help support objectives that you believe in, as well as the opportunity to grow your network by connecting with the Mission creator.

The same benefits exist when creating missions as well. Not only are you growing your network by increasing the activity on your Facebook/Twitter/etc, but you are helping to build connections with the people who complete your missions.

Are you creating Missions to support a specific cause? By creating missions you get the opportunity to reach out to the Empire Avenue community, and connect with people who are interested in your causes, and willing to help. People’s goals overlap frequently in the social media space, and Missions are the perfect way to connect with these people. Don’t forget to check out who completed your Missions, it will be a quick way to start that networking on and off Empire Avenue!

So the next time you think about completing or creating a Mission, think not only of the Eaves that you are gaining or giving away but also the various opportunities that you create through your Missions. Like great volunteer opportunities in the real world, Missions can really help in ways you might not have thought about.

 Whether you are a Mission taker, or a Mission maker the networking possibilities are literally at your fingertips. So your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to check out the Empire Avenue Missions page, and start increasing the value of your network!

In the upcoming week we will be unveiling a new section dedicated to the Stock Market. This will mean that each of the main applications on the service will now have a dedicated home (Stock Market, Missions, Community and Profile). We hope that this will help you view all of your Social Stock Market information in one convenient place and also be a place where new people can be focused on based on our user testing.

We are currently working out what the Dashboard of the Stock Market page will display, and even after we launch it, we want your feedback as to what will go in there finally. We will also be moving the Portfolio and Shareholders tabs as navigation under the Stock Market page and thereby consolidating all the data into logical areas for new people to easily find their way around! These changes are based, not only on where we are going, but the easiest ways we’ve found to explain how Empire Avenue works.

These changes will go live within the next week, please stay tuned!

For more information regarding previous changes to Empire Avenue be sure to check out the Empire Avenue General Discussion Community on Empire Avenue.com!