Blogshares

I discovered this badge for Blogshares. A quick visit elicited major confusion. In short, it's a fantasy stock market in which blogs and their links are commodities and valuations, crossed with a Vegas casino. If it weren't for the latter, I probably would be writing about the website. Imagine my shock to find Writer's Edge already in play--and I hadn't even registered it! Curiosity piqued, I snooped through every page I could enter with an utter lack of comprehension, except to find a couple of guys who were trading my stock, err, blogshares. I tracked back to find their blogs, and whoops! One was already linked to Writer's Edge. That's one way to make the value of your stock grow -- promote the product.

There was some good reason for me to wait to join Blogshares until the blog had its own URL, but memory fails me. So, yesterday I joined and what did I find first--another blogging contest! Blogshares is almost as complicated as the real life version, including derivitives. Considering it took ten years of study before I dabbled in a municipal bond mutual fund as my first dollar-denominated investment, it's no surprise that I haven't started trading blogs yet. However, I did find the website's quick fix, equivalent to a one-armed bandit: a sequence of questions appear in a poll, and a participant wins five "chips" for each response. Click, click -- kaching! I have no idea what good the chips are, but the website is certainly fun!