Buy and Sell Stock on Empire Avenue

Nearly a year after its beta launch and after receiving dozens of invitations, I finally gave in and joined Empire Avenue. That’s right, you can now track my sticker symbol and buy and sell shares of my stock to your heart’s content.

As I write this sentence, I joined 3 hours ago and have 66 shareholders — who helped raise the price to 26 eaves (the name of the game’s currency).

See, Empire Avenue is a game and that is predominantly why I kept saying no every time a new invitation arrived. When people said they were addicted to the virtual online stock exchange called Empire Avenue, they may as well have been referring to Farmville. I didn’t understand the rationale to buying and selling “stock” in friends and websites.

But the site is more than a game I now realize.

Gamification is form of social proof, no different than word of mouth. Your Empire Avenue stock gains awareness and your purchase price increases every time someone new invests in it or sees someone else investing. Yes, it can also go down in price.

Adriel Hampton (who sent me many of those invitations over the past year) tells me he’s built relationships and secured work assignments as the direct result of transactions on Empire Avenue. Other people said similar. Good.

Empire Avenue now joins Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking spokes and sparks more people to visit my business website. They (and you) can learn how I help the nonprofit and public sectors with social media marketing and editorial services.

Thank you for reading, commenting, sharing, and investing.

The stock symbol is ariherzog.