App of the Week: Wall Street Survivor

If you’ve checked out Wall Street Survivor over the years, you might want to check it out again.learn about investing

Like, now.

The site was known for running virtual stock market games for the college/university set.

That same engine, a trading simulator, is at the heart of Wall Street Survivor’s  newest incarnation: gamified investing education.

Gamifying investor education

The new WSS isn’t about personal finance. You won’t find a lot of that going on — at least, not yet.

It’s all about investing and the stock market and it works like this.

The educational curriculum about investing is broken up into missions. The missions are comprised of multiple learning steps to drive the point home.

So, for example, the portfolio basics mission will take a user through 7 steps which includes things like making a case why investors should own stocks to how investors could start buying their first stocks (Peter Lynch’s buy what you know).

Like the success Codeacademy is enjoying teaching programming to the masses, the point here is learning about investing by just doing it. So, much of the activity on WSS is centered around the actual trading simulator. User receive bling like badges and status for every mission they complete as they begin building the core skills they should have as investors.

The learning is guided but also social. Users can share their activity with their social networks as they progress through the curriculum. As they learn, users are also building and managing a stock portfolio, with virtual money they pick up by completing certain tasks.

WSS launched the new platform at Finovate 2012 and is currently building out its missions. See the video below for the demo.

App of the week: Wall Street Survivor
Demo video: Wall Street Survivor at Finovate Spring 2012

Footnote: I’ve worked on developing the Wall Street Survivor investor curriculum and was paid for doing so. My recommendation for WSS is pure — it’s going to be an awesome learning and social platform. I’d stake my reputation on it.