Empire Avenue Scores Some Major Funding

Empire Avenue has raised $200,000 from a group of investors.

From Tech Crunch:

Canadian startup Empire Avenue has raised $200,000 in seed funding from a group of angel investors, including Boris Wertz of W Media Ventures.

Empire Avenue, which opened to the public earlier this year, people to buy and sell shares in each other. A person’s influence score is their share price, which is calculated using share-trading activity on the site, as well as the Influencer’s offsite contributions to their own blogs, websites or social-media networks.

Since February, Empire Avenue has attracted over 15,000 registered users and businesses to the market, including Sears, OREO, WestJet, Motorola, and others. Empire Avenue says that over 750,000 virtual share trades have occurred on the site in the past three months with a total value of over half a billion Eaves, the site’s virtual currency.

The new funding will be used towards marketing efforts and product development, including the impending launch of its rewards and advertising programs. The start-up faces competition from Klout

Personally I don't see how Klout will be able to complete with Empire Avenue.

I did sign up for an account with Klout today, and while they did label me a specialist, all the information they gathered on me was old, very old. Which I don't understand since they use twitter and facebooks api to gather information on you. Plus there is nothing to Klout and it's not a lot of fun.