And today, as some have already seen, we’ve launched another sponsored upgrade (courtesy of Privé) AND a sponsored Bonus (courtesy Big Train). My brain has exploded.

Remember, if you’re looking to increase the number of Shares you can invest in any one Member, you’ll want to look at the Individual Investment Upgrades.

And if you want to increase the number of Members you hold in your portfolio, you’ll want to check out Portfolio Upgrades.

Whew, what a week! I wonder what’s going to happen *next week*

That being said, we have all experienced the daily grind in an office environment filled with the different personalities as portrayed in Scott Adams’ awesome cartoon.

Today we are excited to announce that Dilbert has joined forces with us to explore the gameplay value of the Dilbert brand.

What this means for you is that together, we’re bringing out some very cool Bonuses that give you some cool social stock exchange enhancements.

They are only available for a limited time so come over and check out the new Bonuses here.

Starting right now, these Bonuses are available for purchase in the Shop. You will be able to buy them until 12am Feb 15th GMT, when they will expire.

Each Bonus will modify and enhance certain aspects of Empire Avenue for a set period of time or a specific number of uses. Some Bonuses have variable pricing, based on a number of factors including the buyer’s account status or value. Carefully read the description text of each item and be sure you understand how it will impact your gameplay BEFORE you purchase the Bonuses.

Check out the new Bonuses here!

In the next few days we will launch the ability to measure the outcome of a YouTube action by asking your Shareholders to subscribe and interact with a video or channel. All of these actions can be rewarded, and no Eaves will be paid to them until they click the buttons you want them to. Most of this will be accomplished right on the Mission’s page itself. For Missions participants – you will also benefit, as the creators can be more confident in what the return will be; meaning that they will probably put up more Eaves (hint, hint) and thus, we hope, it will create a better experience for everyone.

I was lucky enough to be in the crowd last week at CES when YouTube’s Robert Kyncl, VP of global content, gave some great stats and introduced a panel discussion talking to the new channel strategy of YouTube-sponsored content coming over the next few months. Creative folks like Felicia Day & Anthony Zuiker are just a couple of the great content creators who will have channels on YouTube soon. The drive behind Robert’s chat was that good, relevant content in a niche is where YouTube can excel in gaining a global reach. In addition and probably more relevant for YouTube, they can excel in reaching these niches for the global advertising dollar.

Some of the stats Robert talked to were pretty astonishing; my three favourites were:

By 2015, 90% of all internet traffic will be video.

YouTube streams 3 Billion hours of video a month; that is 30 minutes of video for every man, woman and child on the planet. Wow!

Michelle Phan, a cosmetics video blogger on YouTube, has more views than Style Channel per episode, not just by a short margin either. 750k for Style Channel, 1.5m on average for Phan. Boom, marketing to a niche! Phan is now one of the faces for Loreal.

I was talking with some friends after the keynote and their opinions of Michelle and others like her were interesting. While they did not disregard her amazing growth and great relevant content for a niche, the conversation theme surrounded Phan was lucky to be in the right place at the right time when YouTube was booming, and therefore there was a great symbiotic relationship occurring with content drivers in niches. As the conversation showed, if Michelle had launched her channel in 2012 she may not have gained the traffic and subscribers that she has now. It is becoming more difficult to drive people to your content and engage them just because of the sheer amount of content that is now on YouTube.

Missions have proven incredibly powerful for driving engagement with online content, and this is just one way we’re improving the feature. This release will be the first of a few that we will release over the coming weeks with a similar theme, i.e. giving the creator traceability and help them to better engage people in their content.

Many of you may have heard of SOPA and PIPA, but if you haven’t, let us give you a quick rundown on what it is and some links to go find out more (below). In short, SOPA and PIPA will potentially give authorities the right to take sites down or block access to such sites with little recourse should there be a complaint that any content is an infringement of piracy or copyright laws. As many in the web world have pointed out, from Google, Facebook, Twitter to even small sites, this would set a precedent for sites such that the burden of policing content would be on the sites, with the sites having to fight for their right to stay online. In addition, the laws would effectively give the authorities the ability to create a giant firewall around the USA which would prevent US citizens from accessing services like Empire Avenue.

Before delving further into SOPA and PIPA let me say that Empire Avenue does not support the posting of copyrighted material or the allowance of software piracy on the web. We do, however, strongly believe that the current proposed SOPA and PIPA bills are not the way to effectively combat piracy while protecting the rights and freedoms of the Internet. As a site we are unable to police every piece of content, post, status update, etc. We use many algorithms, checks and user-based reporting to attempt detection of copyright infringement and piracy and act swiftly when we do find such violations. This law would make allowing you to post content a liability for sites such as ourselves and would change the way the entire Web operates and how social media is used. Many commentators have pointed out that if SOPA and PIPA had been enacted earlier they would have made services like YouTube and Twitter unpalatable and certainly unfundable from an investment perspective. This would halt innovation on the Internet.

From a Canadian standpoint, while we would not be under SOPA or PIPA, the majority of our users come from the Unites States, and we may well be subjected to any such legislation. Many of our users have strongly condemned SOPA and PIPA and indeed, we worry about their ability to access the great internet resources that exist beyond the borders of the United States. We do not believe any such law would be of benefit to our friends in the United States, nor the rest of the world.

You may then ask why we chose not to participate in a black-out of Empire Avenue like Reddit and other major online destinations. Many of our users from around the world use Empire Avenue as a conduit for their business and to carry on their livelihood. We chose not to limit or block our users in this case. Instead, we will make visible changes to the site landing page and other areas of the site in solidarity with the movement against SOPA and PIPA. While the SOPA and PIPA bills will likely be shelved due to the protest and backlash, we want to make sure that our voice is heard by the Canadian government and by other governments: while we support fighting piracy and copyright infringement on the Internet, laws like SOPA and PIPA are definitely not the way.

Dups, on behalf of The Empire Avenue Staff

Further Reading:

• the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
• the  Protect IP Act (PIPA)
• Electronic Frontier Foundation’s position on SOPA and PIPA
• Wikimedia Foundation to support Anti-SOPA protest
• Canadian perspective: SOPA: All Your Internets Belong to US

In the Missions Hub, you can find them in the blue box under the Missions tabs.

Which, will take you to YouTube and to this video — Enjoy!!

Oh, hang out to the end of the video for a selection of other Mission-related videos.

Before we tease you with what is coming within the next week (hopefully before the end of this week), I wanted to quickly talk about why we slowed down on broader access to Missions creation. You ask “WTF is taking you so long?” Well we had a plan to open Missions up over the holiday season; however, we are not happy with the way the current system does not allow Mission creators to clearly know and reward proper completion of a Mission and not just clicking a link. So we slowed it down and have left it at those with a Share Price greater than 70e and a few people who asked us specifically to be let in before the holiday break. So I am sorry, but for those with a Share Price lower than 70e, we are going to make you wait outside the velvet rope just a little longer, please bear with us as we ensure that your experience will be as positive as possible with Missions creation and completion!

We have listened to as much feedback as possible over the last couple of months through Empire Avenue Communities and other social media platforms. As a Mission creator myself I have been frustrated by those who “take the money and run” or “buy 1 share” only to sell it again without thanking me for my generosity, and do not complete the Mission. Aaargh!

The first feature addition will be targeting – the ability to narrow down “who” out of your Shareholders can complete a Mission. All will be revealed within the next week, but we think it adds another dimension to Missions creation, where you are not only targeting to a subset of your current or potential Shareholders but creating more things for those people to do as part of your Mission.

Targeting is not the only feature we are working on, and the ultimate goal for Missions is to be able to give the creator true traceability – the ability to know that when a Mission is created, it will get completed, or the Eaves just won’t be given out. Over the next few weeks these new features will be developed, tested, implemented and released as quickly as humanly possible. We are truly excited about the prospects for Missions as a way to disrupt the way people view online engagement while having fun on their social networks.

We have also received feedback that Shareholder mail is getting too full with Missions, and therefore making Shareholder mail unusable. So we would love your feedback on the linking of Shareholder mail and Missions, should they be tied together? I personally see it as a great way to promote a Mission, however what are your thoughts?

Next week we will release changes to our upgrades, bank and the concept of Wealth on Empire Avenue.

Going Beyond 5,000 investments, sponsored by Privé!
Currently our top users have been limited by a portfolio size of 5,000. Next week, we will enable users to break that barrier with an upgrade to 5,500 that has been sponsored by Privé (e)PRIVE.

Our goal in going beyond the 5,000 limit was to make sure that Empire Avenue would be balanced and fair for years to come. With that in mind, effective immediately, we will establish a limit on the number of people that you can earn Dividends from, up to 5,000.

For example, if you have invested in 5,500 people, you will receive dividend payments from the 5,000 investments who would have paid you the highest dividend amounts based on previous days’ numbers. For top-end users this will mean less micromanagement of Portfolios and, most importantly, allows us to increase Portfolio sizes to much higher levels in the future.

A Savings Bank
Some of you probably know that you can save Eaves for specific items in the Shop. We are removing the “feature” of saving per item and instead giving you a Savings Bank. You will be able to move money between your Bank Balance and your Savings Bank as you wish. When you go to purchase an item in the Shop, we will deduct from your Savings first and then your Bank Balance. You will be able to see a history of your transactions to and from your Bank Balance on the Bank Page. Eaves that are currently saved per item will be placed in the Savings Bank. At this time there will be no interest paid on Savings.

We are doing this for a number of reasons, chief amongst them being that supporting per-item savings is a drain when someone cannot find what they saved for (as an example). In addition it allows us to expand the Shop further and is much easier to explain to new users. The Savings will be available on your Bank Page with Deposit and Withdraw buttons.

Upgrades will be changing in price
Many of our upgrades will be changing in price. In some cases they will go down in price, but we will introduce the concept of a “base price” plus a factor based on your Wealth.

This is the same type of concept we used with our first Power Up last December. As you become wealthier the costs will go up. While the factor of change based on Wealth will not be dramatic, it will give users a challenge as they grow in stature on Empire Avenue.

The first upgrades to change will be Increasing Portfolio Size (renamed from Buy More). These particular upgrades will see an additional requirement of hitting a particular portfolio size before being able to upgrade to the next. For example, to purchase the 1,250 portfolio size you will need to have made at least 900 investments.

Goodbye Luxury Wealth
Our last major change that we will introduce next week is the removal of a feature that very few people understood and was hard to explain simply. It also goes against our central premise that Empire Avenue is about earning Wealth for what you do online, and being able to use that wealth.

Luxury Wealth was a magic, imaginary score that went up every day if you owned Luxury Items. You could not use Luxury Wealth; it has a Leaderboard but little else.

We will remove Luxury Wealth, but we will do a little more for anyone with Luxury Wealth as a thank you for trying out this feature.

Even though Luxury Wealth was never meant to have an impact in our economy, we have decided to convert (one time) any Luxury Wealth you have on a 10-to-1 basis, up to a maximum of 1 million(e) paid out.

For example, if you have 1,000,000 in Luxury Wealth, we will give you, 100,000e and deposit it into your Bank. If you have 12 million in Luxury Wealth, you’ll receive 1,000,000e in your Bank.

You will get to keep the Luxury Items you bought and we will evaluate what Power Ups and Upgrades new Luxury Items will have when they hit the store.

Please Note: Items which give you real Eaves on a weekly basis will continue to do so. This also means that when we talk about Wealth it is your Bank (including Savings) and the value of your Portfolio

When will these changes be made live?
We are targeting all these changes for Monday January 16th or Tuesday January 17th. These changes are all currently in testing internally.

Update: Thanks for all the feedback. We are planning other features which would use the Luxury Items which generated just Luxury Wealth, however, we will fast track a second feature to address some of the concerns you’ve had in response to this. In addition to the one-time Luxury Wealth conversion to Eaves (you’ll see it on your Bank Account statement), you will be able to sell back to Empire Avenue any Luxury Item bought with Eaves only and which only generated Luxury Wealth, in order to recoup the cost. However, once you sell back, if the item is not in the Shop, you will not be able to buy it again for any future use that may be attributed to it. The choice then is yours. Items that were bought with Real World Money (ie $) will continue to pay you real eaves weekly, as before.

Missions, which we launched in beta just 6 weeks ago, are an example of how to use that currency for engagement. I’d like to lay out some of our 2012 goals and what you can expect from us, though I will admit we are not laying all our cards on the table here; there will be many surprises along the way.

1. Missions. We will slowly open up Missions to the world. Initially we wanted a faster rollout, but we decided that it is best to roll out access in stages, as we iterate through the feature set to make them truly engaging. We have our eyes set on better targeting and some very innovative ideas around Missions and rewarding actual engagement in a task. For those that have expressed a desire for us to open up Missions completely, please be patient; we do want to get this right. We will have a blog post on the next iteration of Missions this week.
2. Networks and Content. The value of an “Eave” is tied to engagement online and what you do *anywhere* in a social capacity. We will continue to add networks and improve the connections we have. Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr are very high on our list, as we continue to expand the ways you can earn virtual currency for the engagement you create in the online world. We will be working on new ways to show you the great content that is all around you, as well as highlighting relevant people you might want to connect with based on the content they’re creating.
3. Social Stock Market. The fundamental driver of our currency and economy comes from the investments you make on our Social Stock Market. In 2012 we will make the Market a little easier to understand, so that it is even more engaging to new people. We will also roll out changes that will allow the economy to grow robustly well into the future. We will announce many changes to upgrades and how the bank is set up on Empire Avenue, and while there will be some pain of adjustment, we do believe that all the changes will make Empire Avenue closer to our target of creating an economy around your social media. We hope to make these announcements this week so you know what’s coming and when!
4. Communities. We love community, and we love the social nature of community. We will continue to expand upon the Community features on Empire Avenue so you can be social, share more, communicate and be rewarded for being members of active Communities.
5. The Platform. We will be releasing a second version of our API, which will give developers some neat tools. I know we’ve told you several times that the new API would be coming, but now that we’ve started to solidify the site and the experience, we think a new set of tools will send Empire Avenue happily and merrily on its way.

Finally, regarding the State of Empire Avenue Inc. Our company has expanded over the past few months to meet the growing demands of the service. We’ve hired three new excellent people in Michael Grills (e)MGRILLS, Narsimham Chelluri (e)NARSA and Dimitri Didorenko (e)DIMIDID777. We expect some growing pains in the early part of this year, but isn’t that half the fun of creating a cool start up?

So here’s to 2012! The Avenue continues to grow strong.

First off, we’ve modified the name — they’re now called just Missions, not Shareholder Missions. Ok, that was less than dramatic. The next bit will be better, I promise.

We’re launching Missions site-wide — in stages
Rather than release it all at once, we decided to release it to people in stages. This is to give the development team and support team (the same 7 people actually) time to effectively work on issues if they crop up, and to be able to scale the roll-out in a manageable way.

Starting today, we’ve launched the Mission hub page where everyone can see all Missions that are available. Remember, you still have to be a Shareholder of the Mission creator to participate in a Mission.

As well today, we’ve converted the existing beta Shareholder Mission testers to the new Empire Avenue Mission feature.

Starting tomorrow, if everything goes well today, we’ll unlock Missions for another group of Empire Avenue members. Then daily, we’ll continue to unlock Missions for new groups in stages until, by the New Year, we will have unlocked the ability to create Missions to everyone with a Share Price of 30 or higher.

We’ve set a limit because, frankly, we’re thinking that below 30 there could be a greater potential for Mission spam. As with everything, we’ll watch and tweak as necessary.

Also, due to the holiday break, we will not be unlocking accounts for Missions between December 23 and 27th, resuming on the 28th.

How will I know when I have the ability to create a Mission?
Easy! If you can see the ‘My Missions’ and ‘Create Missions’  tab on the Missions page, you can create a Mission! If you don’t see those tabs, you can’t create a Mission just yet (but may be able to very soon). You’ll also receive an email to let you know that you have access to Mission Creation.

Mission VS Missions
You’ll find that the amount of Missions you can have running ‘live’ at any one time is dependent on your Share Price. The reasoning for this is simple: the higher your Share Price, the better your ability to financially sustain and maintain more than one Mission at a time. So if you want to run more Missions at a time, get your price higher

Uh, Missions?
If you’ve read this far and are still baffled, then read on. We’ll explain exactly what Missions are right now.

Very simply, Missions are activities you initiate, that reward people who choose to accept the Mission. With Missions, you can:

• Drive traffic to your web properties
• Reward engagement in a fun, game-powered environment
• Build loyalty among your existing fans
• Increase your audience by attracting new followers, fans and subscribers
• Discover interesting content across the web
• Earn Eaves fast!

Two sides to every coin
With Missions, there are two stakeholders — the Mission Creator, and the Mission Participant.

The role of the Mission Creator is to create a Mission that gives Eaves to the Mission Participant for completing an activity online. At the moment, you can reward others for visiting webpages – so a Facebook Page, YouTube channel, corporate site – whatever. We’ll expand the functionality in the future.

The Mission Participant clicks, engages in content or a link and is rewarded for doing so. Simple.

Outstanding Results
Judging by the results of our beta test, they’ve been pretty successful, both online and out there in the ‘real world’ too!

For example:

“I’ve participated in and initiated several Shareholder Missions and they definitely work, are fun and a creative way to get shareholder attention to a product or service offered that your shareholders might not be aware of.” – Kees den Hartigh, (e)CLEANKEYS

“Shareholder Missions increase engagement beyond what can be accomplished in even the most entertaining conversations over stock transactions… Very powerful and compelling new feature.” – Kevin Strehlo, (e)MARATHON

Do Missions Work?
We opened Missions up to a select group of around 180 Empire Avenue users initially, and together they’ve rewarded their shareholders with over 127,800,000 eaves – and generated 125,812 visits to various webpages, all using virtual currency they’ve earned by being social online.

Ok, so it’s free, gets results and creates engagement. Sounds like another cool way to help grow your portfolio and your network value. As more people are able to create Missions, you’ll find more interesting things to do and people to engage with.

So go, check out the new Missions!