Empire Avenue: Your Publicly Traded Profile

I just joined something called Empire Avenue.  I’m not sure why but I’ve been saying yes to a lot of this social stuff lately.

Basically, Empire Avenue is the logical extension of the whole “Influence is the New Currency” thing I’ve started thinking about.

Here’s GigaOM on what it’s all about:

Empire Avenue is a stock market, but it has one key difference from Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange: it puts a price on people instead of companies. Members use virtual currency to buy and sell shares in other people and websites, and the worth of each “stock” is determined in part by the user’s engagement on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Depending on who you ask, Empire Avenue is either an empowering and addictive personal branding tool, or just another creepy sign that modern society is going down the tubes.

It’s kind of cool, you get to choose a ticker symbol for yourself.  Apparently, I already have 10 shareholders:

I’m already worried about letting them down 🙂

I probably don’t have time to get much out of this thing right now unless it runs itself.  I linked my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to it, we’ll see.

Source:

What Is This Empire Avenue All About? (GigaOM)

You guys may want to sign in and play around with it, if so, start at my profile, s’il vous plait:

http://www.empireavenue.com/downtown