Scaled Rewards That Would Grow Empire Avenue http://su.pr/5vgDDb
by OsakaSaul on March 14, 2012
Empire Avenue Motivates us to Build The Community
Shouldn’t the rewards for doing so be scaled?
When you are new in Empire Avenue, you soon find that you need to either purchase Eaves to invest (with real money) or, as most do, earn them. Earnings from our installed blog .rss and other feeds are tiny, and social media network accounts connected tend to earn us in the hundreds of eaves/day – though we need tens of thousands per day to invest and keep our accounts “in the black” and healthy.
Dups Clearly Would Like us to Invite People
We are given an invite code and also a blog badge code to help us recruit new members. For a network that is as uber-gamified as Empire Avenue, I find it odd that those responsible for building out the network do not see the need to scale the reward for recruiting fresh blood onto the ‘Ave. Those who use our invite code to join Empire Avenue and also those who enter through our blog badges (wonder why I don’t use one on my blog…?) receive 2,000 eaves for doing so, and so do we. 2K Eaves a head may seem fair when you first join, but after you have done a few 5K and 10K “Missions” that require only seconds of our time, you begin to use your Empire Avenue time strategically, and that 2K Eaves reward soon looks miniscule.
SMRocketFuel
What I Would Do
Scale that reward. Scale it both for the issuer and the recipient.
Decide on either a mathematical formula or a series of either share price or dividend payout levels at which those rewards change. Do this, and those who really put in the time and are regularly active within Empire Avenue (and whose social media accounts garner the most interaction) would present the newcomer with a larger reward for signing up through them. What’s more, someone who is earning in the hundreds of thousands of eaves daily from dividend earnings is still motivated to recruit “fresh faces.” Rather than a 2K reward, his reward might be in the tens of thousands of eaves. This change along would surely “rocket fuel” Empire Avenue into the mainstream.
Should they do this, they should expect a huge increase in the number of people joining Empire Avenue. If this happens, I would change the user interface and include a default-open column showing “new faces” – and updates on their activity, as well as those investing in them. As it stands, it is rather cumbersome to evaluate a newcomer in EA, and if we invest in them, going back to evaluate other new arrivals is… just too many steps and heavy pages to reload. Give us the stats and realtime updates on new arrivals, and then let us filter by those we mark, and I believe everyone will be yet happier. Those new in Empire Avenue will see many people buying them, shouting supportive messages and suggestions – and also, the more experienced and wealthier players will be visiting more often (and staying longer); they already know what to look for in a new arrival, and will refine their investment policies, and engage the fresh blood even more than they do now.
Missions
Having just published my Mission: Irrational article one week ago, which continues to collect great input, positive and negative (all welcome), on how its a daily thing to see people running Missions that are quite inconsiderate of their acceptors, I also believe that Mission rewards should be scalable.
Scaled Rewards for Missions
My ideas:
provide the existing simple Mission launch menu, with a toggle button for advanced mission options
allow us set more constraints, including either a reward based on multiplying the number of shares Mission-acceptors own of us, or their share price/divs/etc.
provide a faster click-through for Missions, including, when people need us to join a community, a simple check box, rather than the current multi-step process
similarly to the above, when people require a minimum share ownership, why not provide a check box, such as “also buy 20 shares when I click the Mission button.” If this was an option, the stock to buy could be determined by the Mission issuer – either his own or someone else’s.
What do you think in regards to energizing the influx of new Mission Avenue users?
Do you think that it would be pointless to scale the rewards system?
Should it all be about real financial and gift, voucher, etc. rewards in a future iteration of Empire Avenue? Or would it be enough to simply consider where we are, actually, in terms of Eaves income, share price, etc., perhaps the number of times we’ve been listed, etc., and to factor these things into what we get for various actions?
What other actions should be rewarded at scaled rates and why, would you say?
I believe that they could greatly bolster the flow of new blood to their site – with a less cumbersome user experience. What are your pet peaves with the site behaviours?
About Saul Fleischman
Working with social web apps developers on getting things made: my role tends to be functionality ideation, user experience, and also, marketing communications and community development.
http://ping.fm/rPd5p
