One of the reasons we’re going is to show how Empire Avenue can benefit onine engagement campaigns for charities and not-for-profits, through Missions and other activities.

We need your help
So yeah, I said it, Missions! More on that in a moment…

Many of you will have noticed that we’ve set up four verified accounts for the groups we’ll be working with at SOBCon:

DREAMS FOR KIDS
Cortez Alexander (Board of Directors/Student Representative)
https://www.empireavenue.com/DREAMLEADERS

GLOBAL HOPE NETWORK INTERNATIONAL
Jeff Power (US Partnerships Director)
https://www.empireavenue.com/GLOBALHOPE

INVISIBLE PEOPLE
Mark Horvath (Chief Evangelistic Officer, Do-Gooder)
https://www.empireavenue.com/HARDLYNORMAL

WOMEN WITH DRIVE FOUNDATION
Molly Cantrell-Kraig (Founder, Executive Director)
https://www.empireavenue.com/WWDR1VE

Over the course of the weekend, we’ll be learning and engaging with some of the best and brightest minds in social media today, and looking at innovative ways to solve relevant business problems.

And this is where you come in. On Sunday, we’ll be focusing on the charitable sector, and profiling the groups above in many different ways. And yes, you’ll likely see Missions created by these groups, and by others on their behalf.

So, just jump in! Be your regular, friendly selves and check out their Missions! If you have thoughts or ideas, feel free to pass them along too! Either to the Mission creator or post them in the comments here. We’ll be watching and perhaps incorporate your feedback on the fly!

Our criteria to appear on today’s Monday Mogul list were the following:

- Your blog is on WordPress.com.
- You showed positive change in your Share Price over the past week.
- Your blog was a journal type article of some length.

The list is automatically generated based on how much change you saw last week in your share price and then manually edited to make sure that only original content is shown. If you like any of the content, go connect with the blog author on Empire Avenue and invest in them!

We’d like to make this a regular feature and expand to more than WordPress.com blogs. If you like it, let us know by leaving a comment!

Share Price Level: Greater than 100e

Username/Ticker: SALLYKWITT
Post: Move Your Money Panel today with VIDEO – Bucks County Moveon and Penn Action
The “Move Your Money” effort is a simple, straightforward way of holding banks accountable by moving your money and other financial arrangements from the mega-bank offenders to smaller, more responsible institutions. By doing so you’ll help to end “too-big-to-fail,” you’ll be investing in Main Street, not Wall Street… Read More

Username/Ticker: CONFLUENCE
Post: The Power To Pack Up
Excerpt: On the path of meditation, I am a traveler, on a magnificent journey. I have to make some firm choices about I what will take with me on this journey. To pack up means to learn the lessons of the present, then to move on, letting the past be past. It means not carrying the baggage of the past into my present and future, but traveling lightly from one day to the next, keeping only what is most… Read More

Share Price Level: Between 75e and 100e

Username/Ticker: BILLBOORMAN
Post: HR: The CEO’s View. (Live Blog) with @hughweber1 and Rose Hudson #LASHRM
Excerpt: I’m sitting in the CEO’s session on HR. The panel is made up of Rose Hudson, CEO of the Louisiana Lottery Corporation and Hugh Weber, CEO of the New Orleans Hornets, and being moderated by Mary Ellen Slayter with Reputation Capital Media Services.
First question: How do you define leadership.
Hugh: Being transparent and open and building a culture bigger than the organisation, where the people… Read More

Username/Ticker: MADEBYJESS
Post: PhoneFetcher Review and Giveaway
Excerpt: I don’t actually want to admit how long it takes me to find my phone when I’m out and about. I can hear the music and it lights up but it seems like it’s lost in a deep abyss. I end up getting frustrated because I have to dig and dig to find it! When I seen the PhoneFetcher, I KNEW this was something that could save me some time as well as sanity. I didn’t want to be stuck in the grocery… Read More

Share Price Level: Between 50e and 75e

Username/Ticker: K9KELP
Post: The Kiss
Excerpt: He had just saved her from a fire in her house, rescuing her by carrying her out of the house into her front yard, while he continued to fight the fire. She is pregnant. When he finally got done putting the fire out, he sat down to catch his breath and rest… Read More

Username/Ticker: YVONNEMASON
Post: Why Do We As Humans Hate Change?
Excerpt: Why do we hate change so much? That question is as old as the world. I have my own theory. We hate change because it requires us to rethink the way things have been in the past. We hate change because it requires us to rethink our mindset about the way things should be. Let me explain… Read More

Username/Ticker: RED2678
Post: The Shift Toward Cloud-Based Services
Excerpt: “To the cloud” You’ve likely heard those three words before. Get used to them – you’re going to be hearing them a lot more in the future. So just what is “the cloud?” “The cloud” is short for cloud computing, which is a concept wherein resources, data, software, information, etc. are shared over a network. Think of it like an electric grid, which acts the network that provides power to homes… Read More

Share Price Level: Between 25e and 50e

Username/Ticker: ONPURPOSE
Post: PWR- Pray Walk and Read
Excerpt: It has been a passion of mine and I work at it fervently to become better at time management. I remember in the beginning of this year when it was time to present a Vision Board workshop I was convicted in the area of TIME. We talk to women all the time about life, jobs, family and after hearing women share all the time that they just can not get it together and at times late for meetings and … Read More

Username/Ticker: TRPSR
Post: The Point of It All.
Excerpt: “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog.” -Peter Steiner
I guess I should explain the point of this blog. Well, freedom is under attack in the United States. It’s two main foes are Christianity, and the Entertainment Industry. I am a person who loves music. I have a wealthy family, getting the money to purchase music isn’t always to difficult, I usually try to buy my music directly… Read More

Share Price Level: Between 15e and 25e

Username/Ticker: STEGZY
Post: Local food
Excerpt: The following post appeared hidden on LJ in 2009 as it was part of my journalism degree portfolio. This weekend I undertook my second visit to Belper’s farmers market. It has been nearly a year since my last visit and it was good to see some familiar faces. Surprisingly the market has grown … Read More

Username/Ticker: ACHERRY
Post: Hand-made shoes and clothes!!!!
Excerpt: My roommate, Emily, and I hand-paint shoes and clothes. We have very different styles so we can alternate who based on the design. We are college students so we want to business to stay small, because we do not have a lot of time for it. How it works: Someone buys clothes/shoes/accessories that fit them, and then we design them for the person on a custom basis. Emily has leather paints … Read More

We’d like to make this a regular feature and expand to more than WordPress.com blogs. If you like it, let us know by leaving a comment!

Please do note that to keep the system fair and inline, as with moving from 500 to 600 shares, there is added commission when you buy greater than 600 shares. From 600 to 800 shares the commission is 6% and greater than 800 the commission is 7%.

You can increase the number of shares you can buy in someone by using the upgrades in the Empire Avenue Shop.

What’s your favourite kind of pie? Mine’s Apple Crumble.

However, we decided to look at that option once more.

Your feedback was overwhelmingly clear and we agreed that if we were going to make a change, it behooves us to make a change that respects as many of our community as possible while also allowing the product to move into the future.

So, what here is what we will do:

a) We will release Pie #7 and Pie #8
b) You will continue to be able to buy More Dessert and Even More Dessert Bonuses to break the Pie maxes by 100 or 200 shares.
c) We will change the bonuses so that they are perpetual between two members once “used”.

Let me explain what this means exactly:

If you have bought a bonus that pushes beyond your maximum shares boundary, when you buy a new pie upgrade, that bonus still applies for that person by the amount of the bonus. For example:

Dups has a shares maximum of 300. Dups buys a More Dessert bonus to go beyond that maximum by up to 100 shares. Dups purchases 350 shares in Ric and hence uses his More Dessert Bonus once. Later, he decides to buy the 400 Shares Pie Upgrade. Going back to Ric, he can continue to blow past the maximum for Ric and buy another 100 shares for a total of 500 without having to re-purchase the More Dessert bonus.

If you use a bonus on someone, from now on, that relationship will always have the extra shares, even if you sell and even if the Bonus is no longer available.

We will enable this for all your past More Dessert and Even More Dessert purchases. This all will be made live when we move up Pie #7 and Pie #8.

We believe, as so many of you have voiced, that this is the fairest option that gives balance to both new members and old members, and certainly also honours those who spent money or eaves purchasing bonuses while allowing people to continue to expand and engage by using new Pie Upgrades.

Again, these changes will go live when Pie #7 and Pie #8 are out. That will be sometime this week.

 UPDATED (April 9): Thanks very much for all the responses. Our decision and the future of Pies and Dessert is detailed here if you click this link. This blog has been closed for commenting.

Yesterday we had lots of feedback on our proposition to release Even Bigger Pieces of the Pie (#7 and #8). We then had an internal discussion on the technical and customer support issues surrounding this, because the view of some of our most engaged users and the way we had viewed the situation were not congruent.

To summarize the issues:

• In our view, a Pie upgrade increases the maximum number of Shares you can buy in someone to a certain level. A Bonus allows you to break that level at a specific given time, so you can have “first-mover” advantage in gaining dividends, etc. Breaking the Pie for us was a way for you to collect dividends and garner more engagement while waiting for an overall Pie upgrade. By introducing a new site maximum for yourself, you would need to buy new Bonuses to go beyond your new maximum.
• In many of your views, however, it seems that both a new Pie upgrade and the Bonuses used on an individual should be honoured. Meaning that if you could buy a maximum of 500 Shares in someone and then bought a “More Dessert” Bonus to go up to 600, you should then be able to get the persistent Pie Upgrade to 600 at some point and buy up to 700 in the person who you had used “More Dessert” on without getting a new Bonus for that person.

Unfortunately, our system currently allows for the first scenario and not the second.

This leaves us in a quandary on what to do, so we decided to let you, our community, write this story, and for you to tell us how we should proceed.

Here are the options based on the resources we can commit to this at this point in time:

Vote on it on our Facebook Page and get others to vote, and the winning option in the next week is the one we will implement.

Option 1. Leave as-is; no more Pie, no more Dessert

• We maintain the status quo, and no changes will happen. We will not add Pie #7 and #8, and we will leave prices for More Dessert and Even More Dessert as they are.

Option 2. Introduce Pie #7 and #8, but Bonuses must be bought again to break your new maximum number of Shares.

• We introduce Pie #7 and Pie #8 so you can make your overall site maximum larger, but the Dessert Bonuses will need to be bought again to break the maximum for an individual by up to 100 or 200 shares for a given use, depending on the Bonus you purchase.

Option 3. No new Pie, but we introduce two new Bonuses to allow +300 and +400 in a person, and reduce pricing on +100 and +200.

• In this option we do not move beyond our current Pie maximum (#6), but we do introduce new Bonuses that allow you to invest +300 and +400 in a person, and we reduce the costs on the current Bonuses (More Dessert and Even More Dessert).

You have until next Wednesday April 11th to have your voice heard.

Go Vote now!

• Ultimately we will have ‘A Bigger Piece of the Pie’ 7 and 8 (still in the pipe)
• Portfolio upgrades — up to 100k members
• New eaves pricing

Nay, gentle reader, Derrik turned the challenge-o-meter up to 11, and created a seven-part linked Mission tutorial that introduces participants to the concepts of connecting social media networks, networking, and engaging. Yep, it’s mostly for new members, or, as Derrik says, “… if things are a little fuzzy for you veterans ” But it’s not an easy undertaking. Seven parts, each building on the work of the previous one.

This has to be one of the most creative uses of Missions we’ve seen to date.
At the time that I post this, he’s got a few hundred Missions remaining in the Mission pool, so if you’re inclined, you can check out the whole mission sequence here, or just review the screen captures of the Missions below.

So who is this crazy dude?
That’s pretty much what we were wondering too, so we decided to use this as an opportunity to kick off a new, semi-regular feature where we profile some of the amazing members we have here on Empire Avenue. More on that after we get to the really interesting stuff — Derrik!

1) Tell us a bit about yourself, your background, etc.

My background is pretty diverse, although it has always been grounded with a love of technology. Along with the saying that is often used to distinguish architects from engineers – engineers know a lot about a little, architects know a little about a lot – I relate to the architecture side.

My path has carried me through various roles in life, some in the past, some current, but I’ve been in both inside and outside sales, a project architect, designer, and CAD guru for some, a network and computer maintenance lead, a business owner, a social media marketing and reconnaissance guy, and the head of analytics department.

Oddly, my majors in college were Political Science/International Relations and Spanish. I’m also the guy that gets the call to fix things when they break.

2) How’d you get into Empire Avenue?

If I remember right, I first heard about Empire Avenue from my friend Jeff. Or, maybe it was Carlos. I really don’t remember exactly, but it was something of interest that fell through my Twitter feeds. I liked the thought of buying and selling my friends. It seemed fun – have any of those original t-shirts left?

But, once I dove into Empire Avenue a bit, things just clicked. I like numbers and am decently active in my personal social media for entertainment as well for as my occupation. It seemed easy enough, and then I found myself hooked. I knew that given just a little bit of time, I would find myself at the top of the charts.

3) Where’d you come up with the idea to have linked Missions?

I like to innovate and create new things and I saw a problem that was kind of a pain point for me, so I devised a way that I could fix it while still operating within the Empire Avenue environment. I had run maybe 10 missions previously and ran into the problem that they would fall off peoples’ radar a few days after they were launched. Or, if I wanted to run the same Mission again, many of the same people would be completing it again.

This was fine for reaching active users, but the problem was how to effectively reach new users without launching the same Mission over and over again just to keep it fresh. In addition to that, how do you then prevent active users from accidentally grabbing the Mission’s Eaves again if they hadn’t checked to see if we had connected in the past?

So, active users will do what they do, and I think you have to allow for that, but then you have to have enough remaining slots for other people and a way for them to find the Missions. My solution: draft a series of Missions that tie together. From there, all you need is one link to get new users started no matter how old the string of Missions.

4) Can you outline the process used to create and link the Missions?

This was pretty simple once I had the plan in place. I chose 7 online assets that I wanted to promote and then I prioritized them figuring that the further down the chain the more drop off they would have.

Once that was done, I built custom links that I could track as well as ones that played nicely with Empire Avenue (I used bit.ly as my link shortening service), put them in a document in the opposite order that I wanted people to experience them (as you will have to launch this type of Mission backwards since you will only be able to find the next Mission’s link in your chain after it is published – for example, I won’t be able to link my starting Mission to my 2nd Mission until the 2nd Mission’s link is available and I know what it is), and then wrote out the titles and content for each step along the way.

Oh yeah, and then I had to make sure that I had saved up enough Eaves to be able to pull off a feat such as this that maxed out the number of available people that could participate at a reasonable reward.

5) How’s the response been to the linked Missions?

The response has been fantastic so far and I’ve been surprised that there really hasn’t been much trickle off over the last two Missions considering that Empire Avenue puts on the brakes if you complete five Missions too quickly.

You also do have to figure in that people will be participating in each step along the way since I had to launch the individual Missions before the whole chain was complete… (hint: launch something like this during off-hours) so in that sense, I’ve received some great partial feedback before people fully understood the bigger picture. But beyond those responses I have fully intended this Quest to be for users that have not connected with me yet so the majority of those responses have yet to come in.

Aside from driving traffic, my biggest goal was to effectively show some of the Empire Avenue’s greatest value to new users right out of the gates. It’s tough to stand out on the internet and in social media channels these days. Yet, if you can deliver something of value and then drive eyes to it, perhaps some of them will stick. In this sense, if new users can see that this is a fantastic tool that they too can use, hopefully they will also stick on the Ave. However, as of right now, probably 60% of the Mission slots are still outstanding. The jury is still out there.

6) What’s next?

I have a few other ideas up my sleeve, but my focus for the near term is to distribute the ‘keys’ to new users as they join Empire Avenue. This takes a little bit of honest education and establishment of realistic expectations (but for this the response and gratefulness has already been huge), and then sending them on their way… perhaps with a little bit.ly link to help them along.

Remembering my first days on the Ave, I thought an incentive of needed Eaves distributed in a manner that helps them realize the benefits of Empire Avenue would be a welcomed gesture.

7) Anything you’d like to add?

Missions will continue to become a more crowded space and continued innovation in this space is a must. You can’t flatten the playing field here because there is a danger that users will grow tired of them and scaled expenses will discourage big players from launching the alluring, high reward Missions… just like you can’t effectively strip the competition out of a game. Pop Salad has recently made the headlines… perhaps people do need a good old Empire Avenue Cage Match (that they can gamble on) again.

[and to the Empire Avenue team, an AWESOME feature that would greatly assist in creating quests such as this would be giving the ability to 'hide' Missions so that they can be launched later in full without users pecking away at them as they are rolled out individually]
Thanks Derrik! And yep, we’ve noted your feature request for further exploration and development!

Get Involved. Get interviewed or recommend someone!
Got an interesting Empire Avenue story to tell or someone you think we should profile? Well then, let us know!

Over the coming weeks, you’ll see more interviews and member profiles as we comb through the engaging and interesting work many of you are doing with the Empire Avenue platform.

So if you’ve got a neat idea or person you think should be profiled, then, by all means, let me know (brad@empireavenue.com).

Linked Mission Gallery

And the Dessert, well, who couldn’t do with more Dessert (or Even More Dessert)!

As mentioned, they’re available for a limited time — in the shop, of course

Since there was such demand last time, we’ve introduced a new, larger 225,000 Eave package, in addition to the other 5 popular Eave bundles.

So yeah, if you’re looking to build up your warchest, perhaps for the upcoming [X]pendapalooza VII event (March 24 & 25), now is the time.

Because the sale ends at 23:59 Tuesday March 27th (GMT).

Why tell us about it?
It’s a subtle change, but one we feel is important to highlight. The word ‘buy’ never seemed to capture the true sentiment of the action taken by Empire Avenue members when connecting and engaging with other members. You’re not simply ‘buying’ a piece of a member when you press that button.

Rather, you’re starting an engagement process that will, hopefully, benefit both members in ways that transcend simple ownership.

The word ‘invest’ seems a much better description in this context, and I’m going to refer to the Dictionary.com definitions of the words to further illustrate the point.

Buy
to acquire the possession of, or the right to, by paying or promising to pay an equivalent, especially in money; purchase.

Invest
to put (money) to use, by purchase or expenditure, in something offering potential profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value.

See that? “…offering potential profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value.” Much more inline with how we think of an engagement transaction.

So yes, a minor change, but one that helps align the spirit of the engagement transaction — your investment in another member — with the spirit of Empire Avenue.

In other words, an investment is a way to say, ‘I value your engagement, your content, your contribution’, or show support, or even thank someone. Invest is a much better word for all of that — at least we think so.

How ’bout you? What do you think of the subtle shift from ‘Buy’ to ‘Invest’? Let us know in the comments!