Alexa Share Trading Game Face-Off

Alexadex
Have you ever played Alexadex? It’s a virtual share trading game with a difference… you buy and sell shares in websites! Alexadex is specifically designed around the site Alexa, who provides information on the web traffic to other websites. Alexa collects information from users who have installed their “Alexa Toolbar,” allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic. Alexadex uses these statistics, to give each individual website a price per share. Therefore if the popularity of the website goes up, the price of the shares will go up and (assuming you have purchased those shares) your total portfolio value will increase. Alexadex has been open for 2 years and has gradually rised in popularity. It has thousands of members and is ranked at 3,187 according to Alexa.

Alexa Share
In August 2006, the world was introduced to Alexa Share. A similar idea to Alexadex, there was a new competitor in the share trading game market. Alexa Share had a much more colorful interface, something that Alexadex lacks, and a few more features (most noticeably, the ability to make your portfolio private). In the first few months of opening Alexa Share had a few bugs, but people were positive about the game and helped the owner of the site fix them up.
Alexa Share also encourages communication between its members, features include a private messaging system, group message boards and a forum. At one point they also had an IRC chat room. The site is ranked at 44,030 in the 6 months its been open.

itsdEx
itsdEx opened in May 2006 and took a slightly different approach to the share trading game. Unlike Alexa Share and Alexadex, it is mostly “Web 2.0″ with some nice design effects and good use of AJAX. The creator labelled the site as “social trading” as it plays the role of a social network as well. itsdEx offers many features that neither sites have, including members get their own blogs and gallery. Also share prices are calculated differently, and you can apply different strategies to the game. itsdEx is ranked at 52,302.

So what is the best site?
Although Alexadex is the most popular (and original) site, there a constantly numerous complaints about bugs and lack of updates. The owner of the site rarely makes changes to the site and seems to have lost interest in it altogether. Some people are also losing interest in the game and are moving over to Alexa Share and itsdEx.
Alexa Share is a nice site and is very stable, although it is said to be easier to “arbitrage” on it. However there are some rules over the site, and the owner is constantly on top of things and also helps enforce these rules.
itsdEx is the most fun to play and also provides the most detail on statistics, however it’s theme and use of AJAX are a little bit buggy and sometimes inappropriate. Also there seems to be too much content and can get a little confusing.

Me personally? I am a fan of Alexa Share and find it the best site to play on, so head on down there and lets battle it out