BlogShares is an online stock market for blogs, in which participants speculate on the future of individual blogs. The website operates similar to how a real stock exchange works. In BlogShares, blogs are like companies, and inbound links are the assets that drive valuations. When members first join the website, they are given 500 BlogShare dollars. The website does not have an End of Day, which is the end of the trading day in financial markets—players can trade at any time.
Several common strategies have been adopted by BlogShares members. Some players try to get their blog on the Top 100 Index on BlogShares, which lists the 100 blogs with the most inbound links. Other players purchase shares in popular blogs in the hopes that they will continue to grow.
Seyed Razavi is the website's founder and programmer. After realizing that the blogosphere was similar to a stock market, Razavi setup BlogShares to allow participants to trade virtual shares of blogs, in what he considered the attention economy. He noted that some members play BlogShares like a role-playing game, and some go as far as to consider themselves as a blog's chief executive officer, demanding accurate metrics for blogs that they have stakes in. Razavi also stated that BlogShares observes that its players have experienced behavior modifications, since the game is "a psychological phenomenon worth measuring".
