Alexadex - The Web Site Trading Game

I am always keeping an eye on the latest cool applications built on the Alexa Web Information Service. The latest and perhaps most fun of the bunch is Alexadex. Built by a former Alexa employee, this site is pure fun. It allows anybody to buy and sell Web sites with the price pegged at the weekly reach of the site.

Alexa had an employee, Eliot Savarese, who worked in QA about 5 years ago and he never tired of telling me about his idea for a Web site trading game based on Alexa data. I never took him seriously. We simply didn't have the resources to justify building a game when so much work was needed on the Alexa toolbar and on the Web site. I don't know if he's seen Alexadex yet, but I'm sure he'll be wanting to kick me right about now. But this is the beauty of the Alexa Web Information Service. Alexa doesn't have to build the game... andybody can, and somebody has.

Alexadex is strictly a one-man, part-time operation, built in fits and starts over the last month or so. You start the game with a fictional account filled with $10 grand. You can use it to purchase sites with prices pegged at the weekly reach number for a given site. If the site goes up you begin to make money. If it goes down you lose money. It now features graphs, movers and shakers and top traders. There are now hundreds of active traders, all trying to pick the next hot site.

Alexadex can get pretty addictive, especially if you consider yourself to be a Web "expert." The trick is to try to pick sites that are getting heavier-than-usual traffic today and buy them today, to take advantage of their Alexa reach stats tomorrow. I had an amazing run of luck when I first played the game and eventually had millions of dollars, unfortunately, all fictional. But it didn't stop me from fantasizing that I had some latent talent that was going to make me fabulously rich.

Are you an E-prognosticator? Do you know the next big thing online? Prove it: Alexadex.

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