End of the road for Empire Avenue?

It was a short-lived honeymoon, but Empire Avenue, launched February 23rd of this year, is getting some “meh” reactions on Google+ from people who tried it and gave it up.  By the way, I’m in the crowd that thinks Empire Avenue offers little for the time required of users to inflate their stock value.

But maybe myself and others are wrong.  With Google+ launching and so much social activity left  untracked by Empire Avenue, mine and many others’ stock reflects nothing near the value it should, if EA is to be believed as a true representation of the importance of one’s social activity.

Here is part of a discussion from Google+ this week:

Here’s a thought: EA was hot in an aging social scene dominated by Facebook and Twitter.  Then a little over 3 weeks ago, Google+ shined a big light on just how stale social media was getting.  And what many of us saw when the lights were turned on was a bunch of “post for the sake of itself” activity and little substance.  It’s like we were all lulled into believing we were riding a wave of freshness and importance when, really, we were tolerating mediocrity in our social networking.

Again, I could be wrong.  EA might start tracking G+ soon.  I don’t know.

Even so, I still have a big problem with EA and its “valuations.”  You are required to be on EA far too much in order to inflate your value.  People are living on there and that seems to be the only way to get over $100 share price.

If it were a true measurement of social status, it wouldn’t require anything other than playing the game when you want to, and not losing value just because you’re out there doing what it purports to track.

And heaven forbid you take a vacation!

Did my real value in the social space drop by 1/2 just because I went on a rafting trip in New Mexico?  I hardly think so.  Yet I come back to a dismal decline in my stock on EA as if I had dropped off the planet literally.  And that’s publicly viewable misinformation you don’t want potential customers or clients seeing.

So, you start feeling like you are a slave to EA and playing the game.  Not a good thing at all.  And all this is done with your permission.  You give EA the power to rank you, favorably or not, by its own rules which means more time-on-site for EA and far less return for the average user no matter what their true value is in social media.

Bottom line: What would happen if I quit EA today?  Would my business suffer?  Not one bit.  I guess because I never camped out there for weeks straight I have less to lose than someone else.  But I’m hard pressed to know what the heck anyone could be losing by dropping it.

One final thing that will contribute to the demise of Empire Avenue

Social networking and marketing is only valuable to the extent that the platform stays out of the way of what you really want people focused on:  you and your brand.  When everyone could give a shit about you (all they want is to play the game and make more Eaves), you’re playing a game with social media that you’re bound to lose.

Could you make valuable contacts and build a responsive following with EA if you really went for it?  Surely some have.  I know Randy Gage seems to be getting a lot out of it, or at least last I checked.

But he’d be in the “camping out” crowd I mentioned earlier, for sure.  Nothing at all wrong with that, but EA is a tiny network.  Why spend your social capital there when there is so much more to be gained by sticking with the much larger networks where YOU are the reason people follow and engage rather than a game?

There are only so many hours in the day.  Where you spend them on social is a big deal and results vary greatly depending on that.  If a game requires more of you than you are getting out of it, it seems a silly waste of time, in my opinion.

Again, could be wrong.  Would love to hear what others think.  Show me the value of EA if there is any!