Hey all... hope you're enjoying the beta so far! If you aren't in yet, be sure to sign up, and we'll get you in as soon as we can.
Today's a big day for us: it's the day our first press release goes out to media! After our awesome launch event last night at Transcend Coffee in Edmonton, we're ready to show off the site to the world. I figured we should post the press release here. Enjoy!
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Empire Avenue Inc., a Canadian start-up, today unveiled the People's Market, an online destination that allows individuals to measure the value of their contributions to blogs and social-media networks like Facebook and Twitter. The site empowers individuals to turn the value of their online contributions into real revenue, challenging Google’s dominance in online advertising with a more relevant and targeted advertising platform.
Anyone registered on Empire Avenue can buy and sell virtual shares in anyone else on the site for free. A person's influence score is their stock price on Empire Avenue, which is calculated using share-trading activity on the site, as well as the Influencer’s offsite contributions to their own blogs, websites or social-media networks. An Influencer’s shareholders can rate those contributions, rewarding quality content and providing additional metrics to be used to increase or decrease stock prices. Shareholders, meanwhile, are rewarded in virtual currency for the successes and activity of their investments.
“Online, every writer, blogger, photographer or Twitterer creates value that translates to influence, but nobody has been able to answer the question, 'What's my influence worth?' until now,” said Duleepa (Dups) Wijayawardhana, CEO of Empire Avenue. “We make it easy for everyone to realize just how valuable that influence is.”
“We want people to earn revenue from their activity and influence – and that’s where our highly targeted and relevant advertising platform comes in,” said Tom Ohle, Empire Avenue Vice President of Marketing and Media Relations. “Anyone can choose to utilize our advertising platform, carrying ads wherever they want, in the manner they choose, with the brands and interests they support.”
Empire Avenue is currently undergoing a closed beta test to ensure that all systems and servers are in top-notch condition for the public launch. The beta group will expand gradually in the coming weeks as the company works toward a full Empire Avenue launch in the summer of 2010.
Anyone interested in seeing the People’s Market on Empire Avenue before the masses is urged to enter a valid email address at EmpireAvenue.com.
Follow Empire Avenue at Twitter.com/EmpireAve or at Facebook.com/EmpireAvenue.
About Empire Avenue
Headquartered in Edmonton, AB, Canada, the passionate and growing Empire Avenue team has more than 70 years of combined experience in the finance, banking, internet, broadcast media and video games industries. The company’s executives have held senior roles in such companies as BioWare – A Division of Electronic Arts, Sun Microsystems/MySQL, ATB Financial and GOG.com, and are now aiming to revolutionize the online economy. For more information about Empire Avenue, visit http://empireavenue.com or follow the company on Twitter (@EmpireAve).
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So that's what went out this morning. Exciting, bold, riveting! It's like the Fall TV lineup.
If you want to see some pics of our team or see screenshots of the site (which are covered in notes so you can see what certain areas of the site are for) head over to our Flickr!