Brown paper packages tied up with string…

If you fol­low my Twit­ter stream you know that I’m help­ing some friends out with a very cool Social Media pro­ject called Empire Aven­ue.  We’ve got­ten a little bit of press about it lately, most not­ably this art­icle on Mash­able. I’ve not talked about Empire Aven­ue a lot on my blog as I wasn’t really pre­pared — lots of oth­er stuff going on, etc. But now is the time..

In the last few months, I’ve noticed a few things about the Empire Aven­ue world that have really impressed me. Allow me a few moments to wax poet­ic on a few of those things.

Com­munity
In the latest devel­op­ment release, cod­named ‘Cork’, Empire Aven­ue gained Com­munit­ies — places where you can hang your hat and focus your influ­ence development.
For me the key word is Focus. Unlike Face­book or oth­er sites where com­munity par­ti­cip­a­tion has few con­sequences, an Empire Aven­ue Com­munity forces you to focus, because;

• You are lim­ited in the num­ber of Com­munit­ies you join — which should provide more real value to all mem­bers, unlike oth­er com­munit­ies where you just join-up to express sup­port. An Empire Aven­ue Com­munity with an act­ive group of mem­bers can be an excit­ing place with rel­ev­ant dis­cus­sion and content.
• Your Influ­en­cer activ­ity and value bene­fits the Community
• Addi­tion­al dividends are gen­er­ated for the Com­munity based on your activity

Design
I love the new design. The tabbed inter­faces, page zones, and over­all look and feel not only appeal to my designy-side, they are also hugely func­tion­al for me. I can’t wait to see what the design­ers come up with for mobile devices 😉

Blog­ger Posts
Now this is really neat. Over the evol­u­tion of the beta, many par­ti­cip­at­ing Influ­en­cers have cre­ated their own blogs to sup­port their activ­ity. Not simply a blog post, they’ve star­ted up new blogs ded­ic­ated to Empire Aven­ue. Here’s an incom­plete list of what I’ve seen so far.

• Gen­er­al Zod’s Influ­en­cer Picks (ZOD)
• Brett Mirly’s Empire Aven­ue Tips & Picks (QWERTY)
• Chris Quock­’s Empire Aven­ue Tips and Tricks (MAX)
• Adri­el Hamp­ton’s Game Mech­an­ics (ADRIEL)
• JOSH’s Empire Ave. Tips & Tricks (JOSH)
• Colin’s EA Picks (COLEAG)
• Empire aven­ue Stocks (ZACH)
• Empire Aven­ue Thoughts (POOKA)

In the near future, if you’ve got an Empire Aven­ue focused blog, you’ll be able to register it with Empire Aven­ue, and we’ll keep a mas­ter list. It’s not live yet, but we’re wor­kin’ on it.

Devel­op­ment Team
Sure, it’s easy to say ‘These are the best guys I’ve ever worked with’. It’s also easy to say that this whole team is the best team I’ve worked with. Because it’s true. They’re chal­len­ging, enter­tain­ing, enjoy what they’re doing, and are hoopy froods that really know where their tow­el is. Engage them on Twit­ter, buy them a beer, and maybe they’ll tell you stories…

The Mar­ket Makers
We’ve got a team of Mar­ket Makers — soft­ware entit­ies with per­son­al­it­ies that work in the back­ground — that ana­lyze Influ­en­cer online activ­ity and a num­ber of oth­er *secret factors* to arrive at an Influ­ence Value. These Mar­ket Makers all have dis­tinct per­son­al­it­ies and char­ac­ter­ist­ics that come into play at vari­ous times, yet all seem to be doing quite well in help­ing to estab­lish Influ­ence Value; which is also determ­ined by mar­ket trad­ing activity.

So there you have it. Five of my  ‘Favour­ite Things’ about Empire Aven­ue. As I’ve said, we’re still in beta, and we do have many more things to fin­ish before we open it up to the world.

If you’re not in the Beta and are inter­ested in join­ing it, ping me on Twit­ter, I’ll see what I can do 🙂

If you’re in the beta and have some thoughts on your Favour­ite Things, then please, by all means, leave them in the com­ments below.