Empire Avenue, the social stock market game, has announced that they’ve raised $1.2 million in a new round of funding. The round was lead by California-based Crosslink Capital with participation from Ben Narasin of Triple Point Capital, Jeff Lapin formerly of THQ and Kevin Swan and Dr. Boris Wertz of Wertz Media Ventures.

Empire Avenue plans to use the funds to expand its platform and team. They also plan to add new channels, like the recently added connection to LinkedIn. Empire Avenue CEO, Duleepa Wijayawardhana, spoke on the company’s plans to explore new directions. He said:

We’re really excited to be backed by such a respected group of investors, who’ve all  shown that they believe in the long-term potential of our socially-driven economy. We will be leveraging the experience and involvement of all our incredible investors to grow the company and explore new ideas, platforms and connections to further develop Empire Avenue. It’s about to get really fun for us, our new and existing users, and the brands who  have already partnered with us.

In addition to the funding, the game which recently launched on Facebook, added 2 new mobile channels to its service — the location-based check-in service Foursquare and photo-sharing service Instagram. You can now connect your accounts from both those services to Empire Avenue.