What’s a tweet worth?
Well, sometimes it’s not much. But other times it could involve some valuable information.
Here's a shot of the screen used to demonstrate Empire Avenue.
And sometimes you’ve got a great Facebook profile or page, perhaps a sweet Flickr account, neat podcast, an amazing blog, and so on and so on in the social media world.
Now, Empire Avenue is trying to monetize your online value.
Hey, why not?
If the traditional media is suffering at all due to people turning to bloggers or other online sources of information, especially locally, then there has to be some value in what these online “influencers” are saying.
Certainly there are photographers who’ve landed jobs from Flickr postings, bloggers who have written for newspapers and magazines, as that online presence carries into traditional media realms. And if you notice a cute little dog to the upper right of these very words you can see there’s an advertising value in online media.
Empire Avenue wants to help you, yes you, squeeze some value out of your tweets, your Facebook, Flickr and YouTube accounts, your blog, by having other people investing in you, as if you were a stock on the open market.
Right now the people’s market is in beta, being tested by lucky nerds like me. Soon they’ll open things up to a larger audience. Then, they’ll open things up to the money.
Basically here’s what it could do, using this website as an example.
I’m on the market (JSAM on your stock ticker) and people are going to see my tweets and posts from this blog. I could connect my Flickr account, maybe the edmontonian‘s YouTube, potentially even my own Facebook account. Whatever I do, people on the market are judging my “influence.”
That is to say, they are buying stock in me if they think I’m authentic, think I do a good job with this website, think my tweets add anything to their life. I can do the same by buying into people I feel I connect with, or get something from in their online presence.
By buying my stock, my price rises, my “influence” grows and an advertiser may want to use me to get their product some notice. They could strike a deal with me to put an ad on this website, or maybe on my Facebook profile. I’m not sure I’d have sponsored tweets or Facebook statuses, but I suspect that wouldn’t be ruled out by others.
There. I tweeted, people liked it, a company saw that I had “influence” and asked me to slap up a link to their business. Not a whole lot different than a company seeing the Edmonton Journal as an influencer and buying ads in their paper.
Except that it’s really different.
The Empire Avenue team is also calling out Google, in their venture. They think those small Google Ads that you see on so many websites, that aren’t really targeted to the audience of the site, aren’t the best investment for a business.
They’d rather contact an Edmonton business that I’ve talked about on Twitter and ask me to accept their advertising. In terms of this website, it’s like Empire Avenue just became my sales team. And I didn’t have to hire a sales team. (By the way, this isn’t just an Edmonton thing, I just used that as an example of what I’d be after for this website.)
I am going to buy all of these people.
We were assured, at the launch Tuesday night, over at Transcend Coffee, that there are ways to ensure a tweet-bot doesn’t make all the money. Besides, who would be investing their stock dollars in such online “noise?”
If you’re a business you could see who’s talking about you or your industry, see who’s interested in your business (or even your actual brand), find the most followed and respected bloggers, and ask Empire Avenue to strike a deal with those so-called influencers.
So…is there value in your online influence? Could business (your business?) be interested in seeking out the local, regional, or topical influences for super-targeted advertising?
Is this just going to be a time-suck where I invest fake money in my friends?
If that made no sense. Brit may have said it in a different way: http://www.inews880.com/Blogs/BrittneyLeBlanc/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10099308
I’m taking part in this beta too and I am really interested to see where it goes. A novel business idea, but it does ask you (at some point, at least) to sell out.
Well, the Whuffie bank is popular, why not make it a REAL bank? Seems to me that’s what EmpireAve wants to do. I don’t really see it as a good investment of time for business owners though (not as advertisers, but as “stock” to be traded.)
I just saw you on there Jill!
Unfortunately I am currently out of money to buy stocks…but I’ll buy into your influence once I’ve got some cash.
I don’t know if it does ask you to sell out. I talked with a couple of people about this at the launch, and as I mentioned in the story, I don’t think people are going to be slapping ads into their tweets or status updates. And it may take some work from Empire Avenue with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc… to work their way onto any ad spaces those platforms provide.
Not every business would get much out of it. Unless they were trying to convince other businesses they were a good place to advertise. Though, I guess you could do that like I am, and I’d just tell the advertisers their option was this website.
I will definitely be interested to see where the advertising part goes, as I don’t think too many people will be open to “selling” their status on whatever platform.
For some kinds of businesses, and for any blog open to advertising, it could be a great opportunity.
How big of a cut do they get?
Jon, the stock buys say they come with a 5% commission. I’m not sure if that will be the same when we’re playing with real money.
I also can’t recall if they said an actual figure for the ad deals. I don’t know if they did, but I’m double-checking.
And an update: They did not say a number in terms of their ad packages, but will figure that out once they roll out the platform. I think they did say they wanted to take less from advertisers than Google does. But I don’t know what that means, or if they actually know Google’s cut.