Social stock market game Empire Avenue has completely changed how your social networking activity impacts your in-game earnings and dividends payouts. Empire Avenue has been receiving feedback from its players on how to improve the game, the user experience and to make the game fairer — as a result of this feedback, it has decided to change how your social activity affects your earnings.

Previously, Empire Avenue rewarded users for a high volume of network and connection activity, without taking the quality of that activity into account. It did not properly reward
high-quality activity or the reaction to that activity, so you would be rewarded with high dividends for posting a lot of content to every service you’d connected to Empire Avenue.

The updated system now means that your earnings will more accurately reflect your network score, your social networking activity and how others are interacting with your content. Specifically, your dividends and earnings for each network is calculated based on 3 factors: your day-to-day activity (tweets, photos, videos, posts, etc); how your social networking contacts are reacting to that activity (comments, shares, retweets and so on); and your Network Score for that given network.

Your Network Scores for your social networks are calculated based on your activity and reactions to that activity over a period of several weeks. The scores are also affected by the size of your audience, so if you increase your number of friends, followers, connections and so on, your earnings and dividends payouts will gradually increase.

To boost your earnings and dividends, here are some tips on how to interact with your networks:

• Empire Avenue: Log in to the game and carry out some transactions on a regular basis, even if it’s just buying or selling a couple of users. Participate in the discussions in your communities, send shareholder mail and encourage other players to respond to your posts.

• Facebook, Facebook Pages: Post regularly. The more comments and Likes you receive on your posts, the more likely you are to receive higher payouts.

• Twitter: Send tweets often. The more retweets you have, the better.

• Flickr, Instagram: While you don’t need to share a ton of photos every day, encouraging others to comment on and favorite your photos (Flickr) and give you likes and comments (Instagram) will give you a boost in Empire Avenue.

• YouTube: Post videos and encourage other users of the video-sharing service to comment on and favorite your videos.

• Foursquare: Make sure to check-in to locations. Locations that are busy and verified (i.e., locations with specials) carry more weight per check-in than locations like your home. Writing tips and getting others to complete them will help as well.

• WordPress: Share blog posts and encourage your friends to leave comments on them.

• LinkedIn and blogs: Empire Avenue ranks these connections a little differently, as it only has limited information about them. As a result, the game pays out a lower, fixed amount of earnings.

It should be remembered that your payouts are calculated for each network you have added to Empire Avenue, but only your top 5 earnings payouts are combined to give you the actual earnings amount.

Meanwhile, Empire Avenue recently adjusted dividends and earnings to make the playing field a little more level for old and new members. Your earnings and dividends may have increased or decreased without any major difference in your level of social networking activity and interaction — this is why.

Empire Avenue, which launched a Facebook app in April, closed a $1.2 million funding round in August. It added a beta connection for Google+ last month, along with a WordPress.com (hosted blogs) connection.