EAVB_YRMAEVAGAQ

A colleague of mine sent me an invite to EmpireAvenue.com last week. I’m usually up for trying new social networking sites, so I jumped right in. 

I quickly realized that I had just inhaled the online equivalent of meth. The first hit is awesome, but now I can’t seem to step away and I’m not sure what my teeth will look like in a few months. 

The idea here is that everyone has a reputation, or a persona. And every persona has a value. The more you share information that is useful to people, the more your value goes up. The information and your persona are traded like a stock exchange in which people can buy shares in YOU! Ah!

Now I have people who own me. Unlike Facebook, I can’t just step away from it for a few days without my value dropping. I have to tend this space or risk my value losing steam. 

So far I do not see the advertising angle, where or how EmpireAvenue.com will make its money. But I can guess it will be based on the “stickyness” of the site. 

Like I said, I am usually game for trying new social networks. The question is, will this be the next big thing? Probably not. Once most people realize they are not very interesting, and their value does not climb, they will jump away. Empire Avenue, as it currently is constructed will not tolerate the lurkers who “follow” people on Twitter and Facebook but fail to engage themselves.