Wow. In the years that I have been publishing the book review blog, weekends, in particular Friday evening through Sunday afternoon have always been a slow time online. This is I believe the third weekend that I have spent my Saturday hanging out on Empire Avenue, Facebook and Twitter. And for both personal and game reasons, today totally ROCKED!
The incomparable Frederic Denomme tipped off his Team Zen Community first thing this morning about the arrival on the Avenue of AT&T. (e)ATT I had to sell off some shares to raise cash. There were a couple of players in my portfolio who had made no investment in me. These I ditched quickly. I then reduced my holdings in some of the shares I was least bullish about. Within 15 minutes I owned 200 shares in AT&T, which as of this writing have appreciated by more than 3,000e. While lots of folks on the Ave spent the day racing to buy AT&T and pushing its price up, up, up I spent a day at times almost feverishly chatting with my #SocialEmpire buddies, a couple of whom are kind of moving past chat buddies to actual friends and one who is even moving along to family.
This personal stuff occurred against a backdrop of yesterday's post, which discussed (e)FORD's entrance on the Ave and questioned how the huge companies would stack up in terms of dividends, and which succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. Scott Monty, Ford's VP for social media commented not only here on my blog, but accepted the invitations of a whole bunch of #SocialEmpire members and joined our FB group and commented right there on the thread where we'd been discussing (e)FORD all day. Honestly, I have to say I'm genuinely impressed by Scott Monty. His recent blog post about Empire Avenue indicates that he really does 'get it' in a way so many 'copy/paste' social media 'experts' really don't. Monty stressed that Ford wanted to work with Empire Avenue players in a way which does not "disrupt the ecosystem" (of game play). While not everyone who has purchased shares in (e)FORD has gotten a buy-back yet, lots of people, such as Stu Rader report having engaged with folks from Ford and sold them a number of shares. (I was very gratified that even before Scott engaged with us in the afternoon, Ford invested in 150 shares of (e)LIBDRONE.)
That Ford is buying back but not all that rapidly suggests that they may be limiting their purchases of EAves, so as to, as Scott mentioned not disturb the game ecosystem. This would seem to address some of the concerns that users like John Henry DeLong and Stephen Tiano expressed-- to the effect that if companies like Ford can come in and buy a couple of million eaves, how can players who are relying only on their wits and social skills hope to compete at all. That Monty and team Ford seem to have put a considerable degree of thought and research into their Empire Avenue campaign is evident to me. And by and large player reactions seem to range from enthusiastic to cautiously optimistic. All in all I think it's been a dramatically successful introductory weekend for (e)FORD and the most active Saturday I ever remember having online.
Please visit again tomorrow when, barring a crazy Sunday filled with other incredible news I hope to talk about some of the other big companies recently arrived on the Ave, including (e)AUDI and (e)ATT. I also hope to talk a bit about whether and how the arrival of all these big companies will change the dynamics of game play on EAv and how players may or may not have to adapt. Here's hoping that your Saturday too was filled with good friends and good fun. Goodnight.
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