#EAv: Measuring Your LinkedIn Influence
Empire Avenue, the social media stock exchange, just went live with LinkedIn scores. Unlike Klout, which provides an aggregate score for users Twitter and Facebook "influence," Empire Avenue has a large range of individual scores plus an aggregate "price" that heavily favors its more active users who buy and sell stock in each other. EA had already scored YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook profiles and pages.
The addition of LinkedIn could be a game changer, as that mature social network has quite a community of networkers who'd benefit from seeing relative scores. LinkedIn has a relatively limited API, but based on the scores released tonight, Empire Avenue's developers seem to have heavily weighted recommendations over number of connections. I've taken a look at a few people with more than 500+ connections (the maximum shown on a LinkedIn profile) who have barely broken 20 for an EA LinkedIn score.
Like many of the other scores on EA - or Klout for that matter - it appears it would be pretty easy to game a LinkedIn score. In this case, it would be done by cross-recommending friends on EA. It will be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out across EA junkies and LinkedIn "Open Networkers," or LIONs, as they are known. EA weighs only the top 5 scores in it's price algorithm, so juicing a LinkedIn score may or may not help overall valuation on the site.
If you're on LinkedIn, feel free to connect with me here, and if you're an EA fan, join the Empire! group.
- ADRIEL
