Earlier today, I received an invite to try a website called Empire Avenue. Similarly to foursquare, it blends entertainment and social media.
What links it to the title of this post however is the format: It’s a stock market. The book Wisdom of Crowds had a whole chapter on decision markets, talking about the well know stock exchanges (like the Nasdaq) or virtual exchanges like the Hollywood Stock Exchange.
Aside from their value in letting people exchange real or digital commodities they were also extremely useful. Indeed, before the Oscars it was child play to find out who the winners would be simply by looking at the prices at HSX (and yes, it worked even for the so-called upsets).
Coming back the Empire Avenue, it’s a virtual exchange like HSX, only this time, instead of movie stars you trade your online friends. As you gain online influence, your price goes up. The influence in this case is linked to how often people hear about you on the web (twitter, facebook, blog) or how many shares people buy within the game. So far, the community is small and the value, to me at least, is purely entertainment. However, as it grows, the pool of user will hopefully get diverse enough to let us put a real price on the popularity of a particular online entity, whether it be a brand website or a politician.
Speaking of politics, I can see many ways a person could use such a system to engage his constituents and mobilize them for campaigns or the like while getting to know which of the opponents should be feared. At any rate, I started playing with it today, and, if it gets interesting, I’ll keep posting about it. If you feel like you want to try it, they gave me a few invites so you can try e-mailing me and I’ll send you one if I have any left.
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