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!”

Yesterday morning, the excitement in the [X]PENDAPALOOZA VI Discussion Forum was both electric and contagious—which is absolutely remarkable, considering that we’re really just talking about posts in an online forum. Buzzing with a kind of pre-show energy I’d associate with any much-anticipated spectacle, amusing new remarks kept appearing in the posts, compounding the excitement.

One participant’s comment caught my attention:

At 10:00am PST,—an hour ahead of other popular reports and without warning—two new stickies suddently appeared at the top of the discussion. Marked to separate the participants into two groups,—Under 50,000 shares outstanding and Over 50,000 shares outstanding—participants quickly posted links to their individual EA profiles.

[X]pendapalooza had officially begun!

As luck would have it, I was the third person to link their profile in the Over 50,000+ shares outstanding group. I spent my first hour buying all of the lower valued stock I could afford and yelling, “HAPPY [X]PENDAPALOOZA!” in my shout-out message to those players. I continued to reinvest and monitor my progress during odd moments throughout the day, watching as other players blew up my own status updates with festive messages. (Hillarious!)

The Numbers

This morning, I logged in to Empire Avenue to find “100+” notifications waiting for me, as well as a relatively substantial and much-appreciated boost to my working capital. (Reinvested. TYVM!) I see great potential related to transparency in this matter. Any benefits I’ve received from [X]pendapalooza came from the EA community, and with that perspective in mind I’ll now share the following specific numbers.

Before

After (apx. 24hrs later)

Before

After

If I’m reading these figures correctly, gained 4.56 e in my share price and extended my outstanding shares by 9840. And my Net Wealth rose from 1.165M to 1.351M, meaning I gained ~186,000 Eaves value in just 24 hours.

In hindsight, one thing I wish I would’ve recorded was my total share buys for the day. Unfortunately, during some off moments, I kept myself occupied by trimming the fat of older Sliders from my portfolio, and that skewed my numbers.

The official event has now ended, but I know that we’re all continuing to reap its benefits. Stocks are still appreciating significantly and people are still posting comments in the Discussion Forum. For now, I’m just keeping an eye on the market and my portfolio.

THANK YOU TO ALL! [X]pendapalooza VI was extremely lucrative and tremendous fun! I’m glad I started playing Empire Avenue in time to participate. I really enjoyed seeing all of the other participants’ reactions to this event, and I hope all of the players who poured their savings out to so many lowbies, or spent so much of their time “paying it forward” in others, know how much their contribution to the community is appreciated.

And an extra THANK YOU goes out to the organizers of [X]pendapalooza VI, the ”[X] Bar Where Everyone Knows Your Ticker (#XBAR)” Community. If you haven’t looked them up yet… well, that link is right there, just for you!

As for me, I intend to have a good chunk of savings stashed away so I’ll be able to “pay it forward” more substantially next time!

Now, if I can just figure out how to turn off these damn notifications….

p.s.: Maybe I can get your opinion on which of two photos you like. Click here to learn more!

Did that get your attention? How about if I told you that it starts tomorrow?
OK. Thought so.

The basic idea is that experienced players, which have amassed considerable amounts of wealth, are “paying it forward” tomorrow by coordinating unbridled investments in newer Empire Avenue players. The recipients of this charitable outpouring are then expected to make their own active contribution to [X]pendapalooza VI by making subsequent investments in other event participants. In the end, the whole EA community benefits from this concentrated promotion of each other’s interests.

(As someone who’s only been playing Empire Avenue for the last 9 days, let me just say, this is brilliant!)

OK, here’s what you need to know in order to participate:

1.) Join the “[X] Bar Where Everyone Knows Your Ticker (#XBAR)” Community
This community so helpful that they’ve even posted a video to help people find exactly where to join.

2.) Join the “[X] Bar – Where Everybody Knows Your Ticker” FaceBook Group
They’re currently all buzzing about tomorrow’s event.

3) Join the “[X]PENDAPALOOZA VI” EA Discussion Forum
It is my current understanding that the actual event will be coordinated from this EA Discussion Forum. The following is the most recent Discussion response I’ve received on the event:

@99_100thMonkeys #EAv4Good & (e)SUSTAINCHAT @EcoLiving_: (e)IANSPIERS – in this community tomorrow morning (US time) there will be two pinned threads for people to post links to their profiles in – one thread for those who have sold less than 50,000 of their shares so far and another thread for those who have sold over 50,000 of their shares. Those are the basics, more details to follow…

4) Jump in!
I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. There’s a lot more information and a bunch of helpful people waiting for you beyond those links, so why are you still here wasting time with me?

[X]pendapalooza begins
Saturday, January 21st, 2011
at 11:00a.m. EST

Now, if you’re in the mood to start paying it forward right now, and if you like what you’ve read here, you could join me in a great big THANK YOU to (e)NANCE from the Tutoring 101 Community for directing me to the [X] Bar community. She’s been very active in that group, and she’s consistently directed me to key information which promotes my success on EA. Very cool.

Finally, I’m reposting a few of the links I came across while researching this information for [X]pendapalooza VI. These links are redundant, and have been collected here for the reader’s convenience.

SOURCES:

[X]PENDAPALOOZA – INVESTING IT FORWARD (posted June 9, 2011)
The Influencier (http://www.influencier.com/)

[X]Pendapalooza – paying it forward on Empire Avenue (posted Sept. 7, 2011)
Domino Oracle blog (http://domino-oracle.com/)

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.

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!

"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!

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…

The following is a copy of an exchange I had in chat relating to my  previous Connection Scores post. Any addition feedback on this subject is appreciated. (I didn’t want to spend too much time on this post so please pardon the mess.)

SPIKING?

IANSPIERS 4:26 AM
I’m an EA noob. I’m making a conscientious effort to stimulate my numbers; I’m currently seeing a significant spike in my share prices. I would very much like better understand why.

Details and discussion here: http://wp.me/p28mSe-1F

I’m an EA noob. I’m making a conscientious effort to stimulate my numbers; I’m currently seeing a significant spike in my share prices. I would very much like better understand why.

Details and discussion here: http://wp.me/p28mSe-1F

>>snip<<

IANSPIERS
5:26 AM
I’m more interested in getting a clear understanding why my numbers are reacting the way they are than I am in trading. Seems like a no-brainer: If my stocks are awesome, no sales pitch is needed. I sincerely want to know how to be better at this.

>>snip<<

VIEWNORTH 5:50 AM
IANSPIERS, go to the Home Page of EA. Click on any of your Network Scores. It will show you two percentages: the % of your share price that deals with your social media activity, and the % of your SP that deals with how many shares people have purchased in you.
When people buy shares, your stock goes up. When people sell, your stock goes down.
The other side of that is that your stock can fluctuate, even if nobody buys or sells, depending on your weekly average in the networks you have connected.
Your connection score is a score out of 100 for your activity and involvement in that network, and I imagine those metrics are guarded.

VIEWNORTH 5:53 AM
Hope that helps!

IANSPIERS 5:53 AM
Tyvm, VIEWNORTH.
It does.

ESPO916 5:54 AM
check ur “today share price change”
and if its an early spike then its from the weekly avg

VIEWNORTH 5:55 AM
Because you only joined 6 days ago, you really need a good two weeks, one to get past the 5 day connection block, and then a full 7 days to get a solid average, and then you should see a true picture.
ESPO916 5:55 AM
agreed

VIEWNORTH 5:57 AM
The reason people should want to invest in you is your dividend, which is a result of your weekly average activity overall. The more active you are, and the bigger your audience, the higher a dividend you pay. Once you get a good 7 day average, your dividend is a good indicator as to how good you’re doing.
Use it as a selling point.

IANSPIERS 5:58 AM
I understand that only the top 5 Connection Scores weigh in on those numbers. I’m assuming there’s a cap on activity for each of those connections?

VIEWNORTH 6:00 AM
Nope. You get a score out of 100. Get your scores as high as you can. Once you pass 50 though, the other 50 is very hard to get.

IANSPIERS 6:00 AM
Hmm.

ESPO916 6:02 AM
well i believe their is still a cap on how much activity counts in each connection
like i know the more of something u do they less its starts to count

VIEWNORTH 6:03 AM
Well I think it’s all different. You could tweet 1000 times a day, but if you only have 5 followers, I don’t think your score would be very high. It has to be a good balance between activity and audience.

ESPO916 6:04 AM
yea

VIEWNORTH 6:04 AM
Chris Pirillo has 100K followers and tweets like a MADMAN and I think that’s why his score is 71

ESPO916 6:04 AM
its more of his retweet and mentions

VIEWNORTH 6:04 AM
Yeah, audience.

IANSPIERS 6:05 AM
OK. That’s valuable to know.

VIEWNORTH 6:05 AM
Forget balance, I actually think audience means more. Dana Loesch, who’s the CFO of the Politics index that I’m in, posts very little but gets huge amounts of likes and comments because she’s on TV, and her scores reflect that.

ESPO916 6:05 AM
yea

VIEWNORTH 6:06 AM
So I guess the way to win #EAv is to get famous and get people to retweet/like/comment/etc your stuff
lol

IANSPIERS 6:06 AM
lol

ESPO916 6:06 AM
lol
sounds about right

IANSPIERS 6:06 AM
sec…
So, maybe you can shed some light on this for me…

IANSPIERS 6:09 AM
I started last Thursday and my stock price is 60.24 atm. This guy http://empireavenue.com/96TENNISACE has been on Since sunday and blew past me like I was standing still. I still can’t really understand why.

VIEWNORTH 6:09 AM
In stock price?
He got more buyers.

IANSPIERS 6:09 AM
hmm

VIEWNORTH 6:09 AM
Or sold more stock in a shorter period of time.
Also, some of their scores are higher
They’re getting a 49 in YouTube
That’s a high score for that network.
Here’s another tip.

IANSPIERS 6:10 AM
OK. Higher You Tube. I’d noticed that.

VIEWNORTH 6:10 AM
Having a lot of networks on EAV that just have a 1, in other words, you just connected them but don’t use them, they actually hurt your score in the end.
But I see you’re sort of using everything so that’s good.

IANSPIERS 6:12 AM
Yeah. EA is really going to be a useful motivator to spread and balance my social activity.
I’m thoroughly impressed with what I’ve seen here.

VIEWNORTH 6:12 AM
EA is a fun game, but let’s not forget that it’s really the most powerful tool out there today to TRACK what you’re doing.

IANSPIERS 6:13 AM
/nod

VIEWNORTH 6:13 AM
You get to see VALUE in your Social Media profile and that speaks volumes to advertisers and your audience.
And yes it is def a motivator

IANSPIERS 6:13 AM
And I didn’t even know it existed until last week. It has captured my attention.
Thank you for taking the time to bring your expertise to bear on this.

VIEWNORTH 6:15 AM
No problem! Feel free to tweet me, @ViewFromDaNorth, or even Tweet EA if you have any other questions

IANSPIERS 6:15 AM
Got it! Thanks!

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.

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

http://blog.empireavenue.com/

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

http://empireave.net/

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!

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!