[X]pendapalooza VI – An EA Noob’s Recap
Yesterday’s Empire Avenue (EA) event, [X]pendapalooza VI, was outrageous fun—without question, the most excitement I’ve ever experienced in an online trading game! Part MMO and part forum discussion… OK, I really have no direct comparison I can make for this review.
For readers who are unfamiliar with my previous post, [X]pendapalooza is a grassroots community event, introduced and organized by the [X] Bar Community in Empire Avenue (a social network stock market “game,” for lack of a better word). A 24-hour spending frenzy, [X]pendapalooza is a massive jolt to the game’s overall economy.
The general concept is straightforward. Extremely affluent EA investors flood EA’s economy with millions of Eaves (the game’s currency) by buying newbie stocks en masse. Some of [X]pendapalooza’s more active benefactors even go so far as to release many generous, obligation-free missions directly to their shareholders. With their stocks suddenly bloated by this coordinated outpouring, event participants then reinvest in one another’s low-to-moderately priced stocks, stimulating the economy even more. In the end, everyone benefits.
Again: “Brilliant!”
What Does “[X]PENDAPALOOZA” Mean?
[X]pendapalooza VI (#XPENDA) is a 24-hour grassroots effort, engineered by an enthusiastic and wealthy group of EA investors. It’s meant to be an unprecedented windfall of Eaves for EA noobs.
Did that get your attention? How about if I told you that it starts tomorrow?
OK. Thought so.
Ding!
I refreshed at 6:30pm to find myself in a new tax bracket. I’ve commemorated this achievement by updating my avatar to more appropriately convey my new status!
Ian Spiers, nouveau riche.
Of course, like most millionaires, I spend most of my time lamenting that a million dollars really isn’t a lot of money these days. Oh, well. I’m far more interested in getting a good footing in the social markets and bringing wealth to my shareholders.
All in good time. All in good time.
Pedaling Like Crazy Under The Surface
Looks pretty quiet in here but a little bird tells me that a few of my shareholders are actually following me at this point. Thanks for that! It gives me a little extra motivation, and that’s just what I need!
Today, I’ve been strapped in, bouncing around a dozen of the usual applications here in my little command center. I won’t bore you with all of the details; I’ll just say that the demands of a digiatal photography and graphic design can be dynamic.
Among other things, I’ve been reorganizing my entire image catalog so I’ll be able to execute light, efficient, short-term marketing campaigns via my social networks. Primarily, I’m interested in extending my social footprint and appreciably affecting my Connection Scores. I plan to use my existing resources to engage with and increase my base of support. After all, that is the name of the game, right?
I’m also closing in on a significant milestone. As you can see in this screenshot, I’ll probably hit my first million before the end of the day!
Of course, I’m still not sure what to do about the low returns I’m seeing. I spend a fair amount of time investing in newbies and trimming the fat from my portfolio. I hope the new marketing effort will do something about this.
Still snowing outside. It’s a mess. This is Seattle; it’s be raining again soon enough.
Alrite, back to work!
Day 6 (7?) – All’s Quiet On The Home Front
"Snowfall At The Ballard Locks"
After the morning’s latté, I’ve really been all but completely oblivious to the snowstorm that’s assaulted my neighborhood, off and on, for the last 16 hours. Preoccupied with working on new content for my assorted channels, there’s plenty to occupy my attention. My social activity has been been suffering a bit today for this, but I hope to improve the balance my routines relatively soon.
NANCE, of the EA Community group Tutoring 101, was kind enough to point out that I am currently ranked at #16 on the Novice Leaderboards. lol! I didn’t even know there was “Novice Leaderboard”. Looks like I have something new to noodle on for a while. I wonder what else I’m missing that I really should be paying attention to.
"Snow Day"
According to EA, today is Day 6 (actually Day 7 by my math); I don’t have that much longer to wait and my 200 Eaves limits will be lifted. I’m really not sure what to expect when that happens. I’ve done a pretty good job of maintaining my numbers so I imagine that my stock will be fairly attractive. I’ve acquired all of my Advisors and I’ve squirreled away 40k in my bank towards the 250k up “A Bigger Piece Of The Pie #1″ upgrade. Going to hope for a serious boost in working capital so I can earn better dividends for my shareholders.
Time for experts to weigh in. Thoughts? Suggestions? Bueler? Bueler?
(Please post your feedback in the Comments, below. t/y)
ps: SOPA is bad news. Be sure to take some action, if you haven’t already. thnx!
Trying To Understand The Numbers
Ian Spiers' EAv Screen shot 2012-01-18 at 3.57.13 AM
If you read my previous post, you’ll know my most recent efforts and that I’m trying to dial in my strategy–specifically, how my social activity relates to my Connection Scores. I was relatively active yesterday on the social media front. I’m not confident in my understanding of the mechanics involved in Share Prices (and Dividends), but this early morning spike definitely has my attention.
I would love to have some more experienced players weighing in on this one–your guidance is very much appreciated. Please post your comments, suggestions and links to relevant resources to me here in this site. And forwarding the permalink to this post to other knowledgable individuals would also help.
Thank you for your attention.
-i
4:08 update, after the jump…
Generating Content
Jan 17 weather forecast
Ignoring the threat of a pending snowstorm in the Emerald City, I spent most of the day driving around town. I needed to unplug from EA a bit. (Oddly enough, it has been snowing all around Seattle, just not in my neighborhood.)
I very much enjoyed pointing my iPhone 4S in new directions. As of yesterday, it’s feeding content to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and its own Instagram page. Also started using Foursquare for the first time. (It has its own Achievements–just what I need.) Today was really a test flight for publishing mobile content–I hope I didn’t annoy too many friends with my posts.
The current weather forecast suggests I may soon have some time available to concentrate my attention on my Connection Scores. I need to do something before Thursday. I think that’s when the 200 share cap on my stocks should get dropped. I’ve read a few sites but I’m still not really understanding what makes my stock attractive to investors with deep pockets. I mean, I know that the little line going steadily up is a good thing, but I’m not understanding the numbers. And I’m not really understanding how my social activity is affecting my/my shareholder’s dividends.
Jan 17, 2012 Connection Scores
I’m really not liking all those 1′s. The official site explains that only the top five Connection Scores are counted. Even the highest score is nothing to brag about… and I believe that the numbers are still being tallied. As I said, I’ll need to research this a little more thoroughly. Or perhaps open a dialogue with a few of the the more experienced EA players. With my current physical limitations, I think there’s only so much I’m able to do about the activity.
Rantings Of An EAv Noob (Day 4 Notes)
I’d been considering advantages of using my Flickr account for a long time without acting on the impulse, and EAv has provided some extra incentive. Consequently, I’ve uploaded a modest collection of new photos to my Flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianspiers/). I hope to get a decent base of content in there so I can move on to the next thing. It’ll be interesting to see if these efforts will result in any lasting activity in that direction.
The iPhoneography workshop I attended a week ago is really going to help affect this little experiment. It’s easy to push my photos to my Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. My leg injury is really the only thing hindering my producing a steady stream of content for those channels at this point. Fortunately, I have an endless list of other personal interests to attend to.
The last few days have been a bit of a blur. I’m having a good time, I’m stretching myself in new direction with social networking, and I’m starting to interact with a diverse group of interesting people. And it’s scary just how well EAv compliments and promotes with my other interests.
The following are some key resources I discovered during my first four days of play…
Empire Avenue Blog
Yes, this is Empire Avenue’s official blog. As you’d expect, there’s tons of great information in there. (I’m still wading my way though that content.)
Empire Avenue Tips – Strategies & Resources for Empire Avenue
http://empireav.wordpress.com/
I immediately bookmarked this collection of great tips while poking around Google. I’m still too new to all of this to have any personal relationships with any of these players, but I knew that the faces I saw next to the comments were familiar. After a little more reading, I found that my starting an AEv account had caught a corner of this group’s attention–my stock was listed in their daily report of “top new EAv players of the last 24 hours.” If you’ve been playing for any amount of time then I imagine that some of their faces will look familiar to you too.
Tutoring 101 (Group)
http://empireavenue.com/community/page/discuss/?c=2622
Before I get too far ahead of myself, I want to give some serious props to Nance and company over in the Tutoring 101 Group. They approached me out of the blue yesterday and took a few minutes to extend a kind personal effort in my direction–complete with a hearty “Welcome” to the group. And I see that they’re continuing to do the same with others. Personally, I’ve been involved in dozens of community efforts in my life and I hope to be in many more. It’s a lot of creative work and most of the value you get from charitable efforts isn’t quantifiable– from my own experience, it’s not always clear that effort is having the desired effect. (A lot like this blog post, huh?)
I have a feeling that, like so many other things, this will be what we make of it. Go check out the Tutoring 101 Group. Tell Nance I said hi. Even better, go buy her stock.
EAv Winners - Empire Avenue Strategy and (e)ChrisVoss Stockholders #CVWin
http://www.facebook.com/groups/184815508240104/
I had to formally request to join this FaceBook group, but I was accepted within an hour of submitting my request and I’m pleased with what I’m seeing so far. Again, I’m seeing a lot of the same profile pics that first appeared in conjunction with all of those initial unsolicited and very much appreciated stock sales alerts (Chris Voss included).
I’ll add that this is where I was turned on to the following juicy little tip from EAv Winners member, Scott Allen:
OK EAv Winners – ready to find out how to get 100+ EA actions every day in under a minute? I have to confess that I seriously thought about keeping this to myself, but then I remembered one of the fundamentally awesome things about EA — it’s not a competition! Create value for others and you create value for yourself.
Ready? Here you go:
1. Go to http://empireave.net/
2. Reload Portfolio Data
3. Search on people you own less than 200 shares of (or whatever your max is). That’s the simplest search, but you can obviously tweak it however you want: minimum yield, them holding shares in you, etc. You may want to order by Last Known Share Price – Ascending, as that will maximize the number of transactions. Set it to display 1000 stocks instead of the default 100.
4. When the results appear, click the All/None to check all stocks.
5. Enter 1 in Share Qty and hit Buy.Presto!
Chris Pirillo – My Empire Avenue Strategy and Tips
http://chris.pirillo.com/my-empire-avenue-strategy-and-tips/
This is probably the best introductory information I found on my initial research on EAv. Yes, there’s all kinds of other great information out there, but this is the first source I found that explained enough about EAv to make me feel like I had a bit of a footing. (The Communities I’ve participated in on EAv, like the Tutoring 101 Group, have been helpful but sporadic, and EAv’s forums leave a lot to be desired.)
Pirillo is a webcaster extraordinaire and fellow Seattleite. His (brilliant) webcasts have been on my radar for a few years now, so I immediately recognized his face when I saw it in the corner of the page. (BTW, I loved the one with him testing a new SSD enough to buy one for myself.) I found Chris’ energetic introductory podcast yesterday while trying to figure out what the hell I was getting myself in to. It’s seven flavors of awesome.
Oh, did I mention that, at of the time of this writing, Pirillo’s holding EAv’s #1 Position for Share Price, Top Weekly Earnings, and Weekly Dividends? I know that this is only my third day and all, but I’m thinking that that’s a pretty powerful endorsement of his views on EAv.
EAVNET
OK, this one’s new to me, but it looks like it comes very highly recommended by the majority of active EAv Winners members I’ve seen commenting on it. Yes, I get the heebie-geebies any time I’ve asked for my name and password for anything. Do your own research; make your own decision. As for me, I finally did make the leap and signed up for this service.
And here’s a screenshot of what interests me most right now:
EAVNET Screenshot
In language that’s familiar to MMO players, I don’t like “grinding”. The less time I have to spend on managing my EAv portfolio the better. I’d much rather be creating new content or playing with my cameras or reading one of my hundreds of books or playing with my dog or…well, you get the idea. If this is the tool I think it aspires to be, I’ll be that much more free to do all of those other things. (and if it helps out a developer when it gets to the Pro level, so much the better.)
I’ll try to keep some notes as I get to know EAVNET and I’ll post my findings here. Maybe.
OK–there’s a lot more I could go into but I think that’s enough to chew on for now. If you like what you’ve read here leave a comment or a like or whatever so I have a way to gauge this blog’s visibility.
Happy hunting!
EAv, Day 3
I didn’t want to start another blog, but my current obsession with Empire Avenue, the social stock market game, benefits from the effort. Players that connect their WordPress.com blog to EAv may actually be perceived as more valuable by just having a WP.com blog, so why wouldn’t I start one?
While I may not actually have the time or energy to maintain this new effort, I’ll admit that have been a bit curious about the “WordPress.com” interface. I have published a number of other blogs with WP’s full application, but never with their hosted product. This might prove to be a useful educational opportunity.
For the time being I’ll leave this post and turn my attention back to editing images. Those shiny new Flickr sets aren’t going to fill themselves!
Ian Spiers on Empire Avenue
This original post relating to Ian Spiers on Empire Avenue can be found here.
