I started Empire Avenue a few days ago and I have to say its pretty addicting.  I even bought an iphone app for it (I rarely buy stuff through the app store).  EA seems intriguing b/c it combines all mediums of the social experience into one platform.  Want a dashboard? You got it!

EA calculates your social worth based on several different factors, but takes most into account your twitter, facebook and linkedin feeds.  Its fast and easy to create an account…but getting people to invest in you is the hard part.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to engage in this and I see a lot of room for improvement.  Here are my quick notes on what I see happening:

  1. Enhanced/Rich Relationship Building – mentioned by several “investors” in EA, this tool provides us with a chance to build closer relationships with an even broader audience that perhaps we could not get with twitter or facebook.  This key to making it work…collaborating, building relationships and improving your own personal brand are key
  2. Known brands (Intel) joining the space – more and more brands will be joining as this hits to a broader audience, but will this dilute the value of the tool?
  3. Social superstars making a splash – the trend is the bigger social marketers are setting a path for the rest to follow.  Where they invest, others follow.  This helps the big guys I suppose, but the “little” people need to find a way to set themselves aside

Several opportunities for EA to continue to make a splash.  Perhaps further integration with Yelp, Google and even Foursquare?

As you venture off into EA, invest in my brand worth…I’m an upside investment as I’ll only be increasing in value the more and more people are on this:  http://www.empireavenue.com/csalazar