Today we are happy to announce a new feature to help keep your portfolio organized on the Empire Avenue Stock Market, and to keep track of your “Fresh Face” investments. As pictured you will now be able to view your portfolio based on the age of the various profiles that you have invested in as well as seeing the “Fresh Face” icon in the portfolio. What this means for you is that it is now easier to track the progress of Empire Avenue rookies who you have invested in, and it should be much easier to see how these investments are faring for you. This should also make it easier to tell when a Fresh Faced user has left that stage of their Empire Avenue career, and moved on to a world of bigger, and better dividends.

This is just one of the many upcoming changes we hope will make the time you spend on various parts of Empire Avenue more convenient.

We would also like to acknowledge (e)RICTOWNSEND (Richard Townsend) for repeated reminders that a feature such as this would be greatly appreciated within the Empire Avenue community and also his and others’ patience while we rolled out our latest set of updates that facilitated this. Thanks Richard!

Navigation

• Expand, Engage and Evaluate is no longer a message that we will be using on the service. As such, Expand, Engage and Evaluate are no  longer links that are in the top sub menu. You can find “Evaluate” in the username drop down, or as a tab on your profile page as you are of course evaluating your own network connections
• Engage has been replaced with a relatively new home page which we’ve had for a couple of weeks, but expect that to be the focus of much attention and updates going forward. The page now features people and missions we have highlighted for you using our algorithms as well as Recent Shareholders, Mentions and Arrivals as before. You can reach this page by clicking “Home” on the top bar, or the Empire Avenue logo.
• Expand has been replaced by a new section called “Discover” where we will be able to give you options to discover new people and their services now and into the future. Expect further updates to the Discover dashboard.

• Leaderboards for people/profiles, Search and Recent Arrivals are all under Discover now.
• The Communities Leaderboard is now in the Community section as “Top Communities”
• The Empire Avenue Shop has been reduced to two pages, taking out unneeded complexity.
• The About Us, FAQs, Support and help are in one place for you peruse with their own navigation. Our FAQs have been updated in the last week and we suggest you take a gander at them as well

Other Changes

• Leaderboards: Leaders are now pulled more realtime and not once a day
• Leaderboards: Recent Arrivals are now back to being by the week a profile joined, giving you more leaderboards to discover new people
• Leaderboards: Several leaderboards which showed incorrect data (such as Weekly Earnings) were retired
• Leaderboards: My Social Networks has been removed as a leaderboard, the data was not accurate and caused performance issues
• Lists: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Friends on Empire Avenue as sortable lists have been removed, we will be working on ways to notify you of when a friend joins better than we do today!
• Bank: Achievements no longer give any income, so that line item has been removed
• Missions: History page display fixed
• Profile: Hovering over the network score now correctly gives you the network activity.

Previous weeks changes

• In case you are not a member of the Empire Avenue General Discussion Community or do not visit there often, some of our other changes have included Missions Enhancements, more useful Mentions, New Block Policy (implemented and active as of May 6th) and many more.

There are numerous small fixes throughout the site and many other enhancements that you cannot see (as always), way more than we can actually list. Many of these changes may seem minor but move us towards a greater consistency with which we can make changes more easily and reliably.

If you would like to keep abreast with updates on what we are releasing, please join the Empire Avenue General Discussion Community on Empire Avenue here!

Auto Archiving.  After pouring over all the previous Missions, 99% of all Mission Completions have occurred during the first 13-14 days that a Mission is active.  After this period, the likelihood of a Mission being completely exhausted diminishes to near zero.  To make Missions more relevant and useful for all we will now be automatically archiving Missions at the 15 day mark. Remaining Reward refunds will be issued the same as if you archived it yourself.  You will be able to rerun these Auto Archived Missions with the new Rerun Mission feature – which will get your aging Mission more exposure, higher up in the list!  Also Missions that are completely exhausted will be automatically archived later that day.  Existing Missions will have their expiry time set to 15 days from today.

Retiring YouTube Channel Subscription Missions.  Due to inconsistencies with the YouTube API, and the resulting support requests for YouTube Missions that simply did not work completely as we intended, we have decided to retire the YouTube Channel Subscribe Mission type.  Existing YouTube Channel Subscription Missions will continue to run until they expire as per above.

New Mission Types.  As a way to continue to support YouTube Missions, we have added some new Mission types in replacement for the retired Channel Subscriptions.  These types let you embed YouTube Channels, YouTube Videos, and Twitter Tweets directly into the Mission!  Other than the external content now being embedded within the Mission details, these new Mission types are otherwise identical to normal Web Destination (URL) Missions in how they operate.  Please note, for someone to claim your Mission Reward they will still need to click the “Claim Reward” button above the embedded content.  All three of these new ‘embedding’ types feature full 3rd party functionality (YouTube Subscribing/Liking/etc and Twitter Retweet/Follow/etc).

To aid in fixing the issues we have written up a “Block Policy” which we have shared below. It is our manifesto on what “Block” and “Mute” are meant to do, over the next two weeks (up to May 6th 2013) we will take the time to make sure that “Block” and “Mute” are implemented exactly as written below. There will be some changes you should be aware of:

1. You may be kicked out and blocked from Communities where you have blocked the Founder or they have blocked you.

2. You may see content and profiles that you have blocked, because as noted below, Block is meant to disable direct interaction between people (as noted below).

3. You may be unable to interact with people you have already blocked in various parts of the service where you might have been able to do before as we implement Block fully.

Please be aware of what “Blocking” will do by May 6th 2013, and we will ensure that all our on-site documentation reflects what will happen as described below.

Again, this policy is what is intended, and between now and May 6th 2013, the service will reflect the policy below!

Q. What is “Block” intended to do on Empire Avenue

Empire Avenue is a network where members on the service can interact with each other. Blocking is intended as a way to stop another individual on the service from interacting directly with you. Blocking is not meant to avoid that individual or that individual’s content on the service altogether. Think of “Block” as a way to prevent someone from coming up to you and talking to you on the street, in your house or by phone, however, you may still see that person on the street.

Block is therefore not a substitute for reporting someone for abusive behaviour, including SPAM, harassment or any other offense of our Terms of Service. Please also understand that the Internet, as with the world, is filled with people of differing opinions, we only take action against individuals where they break our Terms of Service.

Q. Can I Block someone and then Unblock them?

We consider Blocking someone to be a serious gesture to the intended party. We do not wish for you to take such action lightly. For that reason once you block someone, that person must remain blocked for at least 7 days before you can remove the block.

Q. What happens when I Block someone?

Blocking is intended to stop direct interaction between two individuals/profiles on Empire Avenue. When you block a person:

Stock Market:

• Cannot invest in each other, both parties will get an error.
• If you are invested in a person when you block, both parties will do an automatic sell at the current price of their respective shares. Commissions will be charged.

Profiles:

• Neither party will be able to follow, list or recommend each other. We will automatically remove you from each others lists when a Block event occurs.
• Neither person will be able to send a message or shout out to each other.

Community:

• Neither party will be able to join or be invited to a community Founded by the other.
• You cannot invite nor be invited into any community by each other.
• You cannot respond to a thread started by the other party
• You will be automatically kicked out of any communities where the other is the Founder.

Missions:

• You will be unable to complete missions of each other
• You will be unable to like/dislike/comment on missions of each other

This does not mean you will never see the blocked person or their content:

1. Community Since a thread or communication between a group of people must be seen in its fullness to appreciate context, posts to a community by one blocked party will be visible to the other blocked party. In the case of a private community both parties must be members of the community.
2. Missions You will still be able to see Missions that the blocked party has created and they will see yours. They will not be able to interact with the Mission.
3. Profile You will be able to see the full profile of an individual you have blocked. However, you will not be able to interact with the profile.
4. Third Party Apps We do not pass along the list of blocks to third party apps on the service. Any interactions done through our API will still be subject to your Block settings (such as buying/selling shares, sending messages, etc). However, you may end up interacting with that blocked person directly on the third party itself (for example a forum hosted on the third-party site).
5. Chat and Chatrooms Our current 3rd party chat system does not implement the ability to use Empire Avenue’s Block list. While this may change in the future, for now please take note.
6. Mutual Friends You will see interactions between the blocked person and mutual friends and may even get notified indirectly about the blocked person.

Q. I had an altercation with an Empire Avenue member outside Empire Avenue what should I do?

We cannot and do not police behaviour on sites outside of Empire Avenue including 3rd Parties using our API. However, if any interaction from the 3rd party happens through our API then our API will honour your block settings (such as buying/selling shares, sending messages, etc). For a specific example, we cannot do anything about messages sent to you on Facebook from an Empire Avenue member through Facebook, please contact Facebook or the platform on which the incident happened.

Q. Will the person I am blocking be notified?

We will not send a notification, however, they will likely see the automated sell of shares on the Stock Market and during other interactions may understand that you have blocked them. Please be aware that you will not be able to hide the fact that you have blocked them.

Q. Muting Vs. Blocking

Muting means that notifications of interactions by the Muted person will no longer delivered to you, however, the interactions themselves are not blocked. For example, a person can send you a private message, which you will receive, however you will not have an e-mail notification nor a pop-up alert on the site notifying you of the interaction.

Unlike unblocking, you may Mute and Unmute at your leisure. There are no restrictions on unmuting someone. We will not notify the muted party of your muting them.

Q. Can I block someone I have muted and what happens when I unblock them? Are they still muted?

Blocking will automatically mute someone. Unblocking will remove any previous Mute setting.

This will allow you to add more Rewards to an existing Mission, while retaining all other aspects of it – including who previously completed it, so they cannot complete it again.

You cannot change any other property of a Mission (title, link URL, size of reward, etc) when you rerun it.

Any previously-archived Mission can be rerun.  However a Mission can only be rerun ONCE per day.  An exception to this rule is if the previous run of a Mission saw ALL available Rewards claimed – you will be able to be rerun these Missions immediately.

Once a Mission has been rerun, the details of each instance is available from the Mission Completions details page, allowing you to track the number of Rewards/Completions per individual run of the same Mission.

If you’ve wanted to Create a Mission and didn’t have the Eaves to do it with, take advantage of the sale which will end Tuesday April 2, 2013!

If you have yet to run a Mission (gasp!*!) as you don’t have access yet, we might have left an Easter Egg for something cool to purchase to get you started as well… but we’ll tell you more about that… next week

Why are we removing indexes? It’s nice and all to say it “doesn’t fit”, but why?!

1. Indexes were based on a flawed and too weird algorithm. Anyone could rise in any given Index whether it was really topical to them or not and hence was of limited value in judging why someone would be good or not. The algorithm itself was way too hard to explain on why you rose and why you fell and frankly wasn’t very good.

2. Indexes showed no basis for reputation in any given subject. Yes they were fun, but not where we want to be with that aspect of Empire Avenue.

What’s replacing them?

We do have a plan to replace Indexes or at least what we wanted them to represent in the first place. The replacement will come in due course, but first we need to go about removing what isn’t working. Indexes will be fully removed from the system by Friday morning, March 8, 2013.

I’d like to thank everyone who has supported EmpireAvenue.com to be around for three years, especially the amazing Community and our incredible Staff and Investors. Very few companies can claim the amount of engagement we’ve seen over three years and I am personally more impassioned about the future of EmpireAvenue.com than I have ever been in the three years since we launched.

Here are a few birthday presents in the Shop to celebrate!

1. We’re releasing more pie!
   • That’s right, invest more in those you have maxed out in. Pie #15 is available right now in the Shop.
2. For this weekend only, we’re enabling a new Bonus to eliminate the reward fee for Missions
   • This Bonus will only be available in the Shop over the weekend and will allow 5 missions with no reward fee. You can buy the Bonus as many times as you like over the weekend and any remaining uses will expire in 15 days from purchase. Bonus is available right now in the Shop.
3. We’re having a sale on Eaves!
   • For everyone, Eaves are on sale right now!

Now more than ever, we seem to understand what we need to do to fulfill the vision of Empire Avenue as part of a global Reputation Economy. We’ve solved many problems, tested so many ideas, fallen flat on our face more times than I can count and stood up afterwards, brushed off the dust and continued. Now we can see a clear path to the future that will take us there along with new and old blood who will be joining us for the ride both in our community and our company.

At this point I could wax poetic on what’s coming, but honestly just watch this space. We’re in for a fantastically interesting and compelling 4th year.

Yours truly on behalf of Empire Avenue Inc., The Team and our Investors
Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana
CEO / Co-Founder

What we have since discovered is that while Personal Communities have thrived (those created by and managed by an individual or few individuals), most of the City and Interest Communities have withered and died from spam, lack of ownership and lack of direction. Increasingly Empire Avenue is about your networks and the value your networks bring to you and others, and while City and Interest Communities worked when we first launched them, they no longer fit in the future we wish to build.

As such, we are announcing the removal of City and Interest Communities as of February 28th 2013.

• If there are discussions that you were/are involved with in City and Interest Communities, we suggest that you contact others participating in City and Interest Communities and let them know.
• We will block access to City and Interest Communities and only allow Personal Communities.
• We will automatically remove you as members of City and Interest Communities.
• You will no longer be able to target Missions towards City and Interest Communities (such Missions only amounted to a handful every month and their completion rates are far far below our Missions averages). We will instead explore new ways to target Missions separately.

Removing City and Interest Communities will allow us to concentrate our development and community building efforts on Personal Communities which have been created by individuals to support and bring value to their own networks.

As we wind down for the weekend in North America and to celebrate the the disappearance of half the team for a holiday break, we are going to treat you with more Pie, while the cats are away!

We hope you guys have a great trip, but the folks left behind are giving away the farm!

The boring bits!
We now have Pie Upgrades that will allow you to take the maximum you invest in someone to 1400 shares using upgrades. The current More Dessert and Even More Dessert Bonuses are still active, previous Dessert Bonuses you’ve used will be active even with the new Pie which means you might be able to go to 1600 shares in someone.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Half of Team Empire Avenue