Empire.Kred

Lore & Background

Empire Avenue was conceived by three founders who met at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada. Duleepa Wijayawardhana had experience at BioWare and MySQL AB; Michael Mannion held a Post-Doctorate in Chemistry from Harvard; and Niall Brown had an Arts background. They reconnected in Montreal and developed the idea for a crowd-sourced market where value could be determined through collective user actions, rather than purely algorithmic methods. The platform launched in beta around May 2010, growing to 15,000 users by August 2010, with over 750,000 virtual share trades representing more than half a billion Eaves, the platform's virtual currency.

Reader's Guide

Empire.Kred (formerly Empire Avenue) represents a notable early attempt to quantify and trade social influence through gamified mechanics. The platform allowed users to buy and sell virtual shares in each other, with prices based on activity across connected networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. It attracted both interest and criticism as an experiment in measuring online value. The platform secured seed funding from angel investors led by Boris Wertz and later $1.2 million in Series A funding from Crosslink Capital and others, including BioWare co-founders. Empire Avenue participated in protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2011. In 2015, it was acquired by PeopleBrowsr and rebranded as Empire.Kred. The platform eventually ceased operations, with a message stating that after 15 years, the sun had set on the Empire. Its legacy lies in pioneering the concept of a social stock market and influencing later discussions on influence metrics.

Did You Know?

• The platform's virtual currency was called 'Eaves'.
• Empire Avenue was founded by three individuals who met at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada.
• The platform participated in protests against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2011.
• Empire Avenue was acquired by PeopleBrowsr in 2014 and rebranded as Empire.Kred.

Three Friends, One Wild Idea: The Founding Story

The story of Empire Avenue begins not in a boardroom but in the halls of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland, where Duleepa Wijayawardhana, Michael Mannion, and Niall Brown first crossed paths. Fifteen years later, their separate career trajectories had carried them to Montreal, where they reconnected and began sketching out a bold premise: what if the value people generate on social networks could be measured and traded like a commodity? Their combined expertise was remarkably eclectic. Wijayawardhana had worked at BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and later at MySQL AB before it was absorbed into Oracle. Mannion held a post-doctorate in chemistry from Harvard. Brown brought a humanities perspective. They argued that purely algorithmic scoring systems failed to capture the true worth of an individual's online presence, and that a crowd-sourced marketplace, where users collectively decided who was valuable, would be a more honest metric. Wijayawardhana has noted that watching his previous company get acquired by a corporate giant motivated him to pursue a venture where he could build something uniquely his own.

Pricing Human Influence: The Virtual Stock Market in Action

Empire Avenue's central mechanic was deceptively simple: users bought and sold virtual shares in one another, with prices fluctuating based on perceived social influence and activity across connected networks like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and personal blogs. Transactions were conducted in a proprietary virtual currency called Eaves, and the entire system functioned as a crowd-sourced valuation engine for human attention. The platform opened to the public around late July 2010, but momentum had been building well before that. During a closed beta among friends and family, the team executed a "Big Reset," wiping all share prices clean as they transitioned to an invite-only phase. Even so, the response was electric. By August 2010, while still technically in beta, the platform had drawn more than 15,000 registered users and businesses spanning over 95 countries. Virtual trading volume was already substantial, with over 750,000 share transactions processed and a cumulative value exceeding half a billion Eaves. The site briefly trended on Twitter in Canada, and early international communities, with users in Chile specifically noted, began forming around the concept. The core team had grown to eight people by May 2010, covering UI design, legal work, marketing, mathematics, and programming.

Angel Money, Gaming Legends, and a Protest Against SOPA

Empire Avenue's financial backing reflected the unusual breadth of its founding team's network. The initial seed round, announced in August 2010, came from a private group of angel investors led by Boris Wertz of W Media Ventures, with funds directed toward accelerating development, launching an "Avenue Rewards" program, and building an advertising platform. A year later, in August 2011, the company closed a $1.2 million Series A led by venture capital firm Crosslink Capital. The investor roster read like a who's-who of the gaming and tech worlds: BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, former THQ and Take-Two executive Jeff Lapin, iNovia Capital, TriplePoint Capital, and several other prominent individuals. Wertz himself reinvested. Beyond its financial milestones, Empire Avenue made a brief but notable political statement in late 2011 by joining Canadian companies in protesting the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act in the United States, aligning itself with digital rights advocates opposing the controversial legislation. The platform also attracted significant criticism alongside its interest, as the very idea of pricing human influence in a market sparked debate about whether social worth could or should be commodified.

Absorbed, Rebranded, and the Final Sunset

Empire Avenue's story did not end in a dramatic collapse but in a quiet absorption. In 2015, the platform was acquired by PeopleBrowsr, a company whose own product, Kred, was similarly focused on measuring and quantifying online influence. The two brands merged, and the platform was rebranded as Empire.Kred, continuing to operate under the new identity. However, the experimental energy that had defined the original Empire Avenue, its gamified trading, its community-driven valuations, its bootstrapped scrappiness, proved difficult to sustain in the increasingly consolidated social media landscape of the mid-2010s. The platform eventually ceased all operations. Its final message to users was characteristically understated: "After 15 years of building, growth and community, the sun has set on the Empire." That single line encapsulated both the ambition of three friends who once met at a Newfoundland university and the reality that even well-intentioned experiments in quantifying human connection can find that the market they were trying to create simply evolved beyond them. Empire.Kred is no longer active.

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