Join the new world

What is the biggest problem facing our nation? That's a good question.
Is it the threat of invasion by the UK, the lack of a constitution, or maybe just Ron O’Reagan? No, the biggest problem facing our country is the low number of citizens.

Simple rule: the more people in our country, the more interesting this game will be. I am going to outline some of the measures we are taking to address this problem. BUT I am asking for feedback from everyone. Give a suggestion on what you think could be done better or different, and if you're feeling extra motivated, give some details on how it can be done, or (better yet) get involved in the effot(s) yourself!

Currently, we are listed as having 1,382 citizens. But in reality, there are only about 350 of those who are actually ACTIVE citizens. The population in this country (and the game in general) is slowly decreasing.
Here's some proof: We had a high of about 2,000 citizens just a couple of months ago. We were getting 30 new citizens a day. Today, it was only 13 new eIrelanders and that's a good day. Recently, we've had new citizen numbers in the single digits! The reality is that we are dying a slow death unless we do something about it.

I was once accused of having only one skill: that of recruitment. Let's see if I'm good enough to apply it on a national level.



Immigration

The minister of immigration has accepted 5 people into the country in the last 11 days. We have accepted 22 new citizens this month. If you compare this to the potential amount we could accept (80 a month) you can see that we are underutilizing this aspect of the game. We have been reactive and waited for citizens to apply for citizenship to Ireland. We have decided to change this. We will start to proactively recruite citizens from other countries. In order to attract citizens, the government will be offering a moving ticket and a small cash bonus to reliable citizens willing to move.
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Youtube video

A progress report on CelticTiger’s Irish promotional video can be found HERE. The Government backed a 20 Gold advertising campaign aimed at achieving as many views as possible and as a result, the video has reached 495 views! Furthermore, using the ‘statistics’ feature on YouTube, we can see that the video has been referred from the YouTube homepage numerous times and has appeared in search results several times as well. This means that it should be somewhat self-promoting to members of the Irish community!

Retention of new citizens

Edana and John Gormley are working a way in the Minister of New Citizens. They have got the API going again and are working on re-writing the new citizen message. When they are done this will be put before the Dail for discussion.

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Money Talks

We have about 100,000 in iep in reserve as a government. I think some of it should be used to help solve this problem. So I am proposing a new players lottery each week. It would be eligible to any one level 12 or less and first prize would be 250 iep. I would suggest we open in up to all players once a month with a large jackpot of 1,000iep. We will also use some of the Q1 houses we have in stock as prizes. This is one way to make it interesting for new players.



Minium Wage

The Minium wage is officialy 1.4 but in reality it is 2.00 which is what the state welfare companies pay. We are going to increase this to 3.00 a day for two weeks to insensitive new citizens to stay. We will measure if this increases citizen retention and the cost benefit of doing it. I do not know if this will work but think we need to try every thing we can.


Facebook as explained by Irish Princess

Facebook Connect on eRepublik: What's the Deal?
Many of you (us, really) think the Facebook connect is SOOPER annoying. Yes, I know. The little "Connect your eRepublik account to Facebook" popup you recieve upon EVERY login is...well...a bit ridiculous. But after working with moo on this Baby Boom/Recruitment article, I've done some research on the subject, and I've found that the Adminies aren't as ridiculous as the Princess once thought they were.
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Check it out:
Facebook is an online social networking site that connects people to other people. Now, that last bit was back before the "Like" button and "Fan pages," mind you. Now, Facebook not only connects people to other people, but people's interests and "Likes" to other people's interests and "Likes."
Hence the reasoning behind the Admin's Facebook Frenzy:
eRepublik is full of people. People on Facebook. People on Facebook connecting to other people who are also on Facebook, but not necessarily on eRepublik.
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Now, if the non-eRepublik users connect with eRepublik users via Facebook, they have a 72% chance of somehow coming across a link to eRepublik. That's a 72% chance that someone will hop onto eRepublik, see how flitterific it is, and sign up. And what's even better for the Admin (aka Admeanies) is that if a new recruit's Facebook friend is on eRepublik, there's even MORE of an incentive for him/her to stay on board with the game and continue to love it (you know, besides just the normal amazingness of eRepublik and all its wonder) 😉
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So...what?
It's pretty obvious why the Admin would want to use Facebook Connect with the in-your-face ferocity that they've been implementing. It's FREE recruitment and promotion for their game. For their work. For their...life purpose? But what does this have to do with eIreland? I'm about to tell you:
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Now, I know many of you have read the eUK's Baby Boom article, outlining their efforts to gain some UK citizens via Facebook fan pages.
eIreland can do that too! I know we already have an eIreland Facebook Fan Page (Thanks, Kolshire!) with a few dozen members (all eIrish citizens, mind you), but we need to broaden our scope.
We're looking to find people who are non eRepublik users who want to join eRepublik as eIrelanders, right? That last part is the key.
We need more than just a link to eRepublik. We need an overall sense of organization and community that supports eRepublik's EIRELAND.

What can we do?
The eUK is going after a particular fan page which outlines RL UK Gaming. ...that's all they've got?
I say we need a Ministry (perhaps the Ministry of Technology?) to:
(1) Search Facebook (far and wide) for Fan Pages regarding Irish...anything, RL Ireland, gaming, internet gaming, etc.
We can't just have fan pages about eRepublik. That's only going to attract people who already know about eRepublik. If they already know about eRepublik, they're not going to want to rejoin! That's called multi-ing, guys! C'mon now! That's why we need to target people (or groups of people) who would possibly be interested in the game itself (the Gaming fan pages) or the concept of an e (electronic, virtual, what have you) IRELAND (the Irish-based fan pages).
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(2) LINK to something eIRISH
Once we've located the fan pages we want to target, we need to create a buzz about eIreland. Maybe link to some eIrish articles (some juicy ones!) or the eIrish wiki, or the eIrish politics page. This will be up on the fan page for all the members to see.
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(3) TELL US about it!
Once they (that is, the Ministry of whoever can run this) have searched and found some fan pages, maybe take 3 at a time and have every eIrishman and every eIrishlady (and the eIrish Princess, of course) hop on Facebook and hit the "Like" button on the comment that the Minister has posted. This serves two main purposes: (a) to get the post and link more attention. If more people like what is written (and linked to), the more curious others will be; and (b) to add a larger base of Facebook friends to those who are a part of the fan page in question and "liking" what's written on it.
The more Facebook friends one accumulates, the easier it is to reach larger amounts of people.

Let's put that last thing into perspective:

Let's say the Ministry of Facebook's leader, Mr. eIrish, posts the following comment on an Irish Internet Gaming Facebook Fan Page:
"Woah! This is SOOO cool! I've never read anything so awesome in my life!
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/the-saga-part-1--1282374/1/20 "

Then, 50 eIrishpeople hit the "Like" button on this comment (or, better yet, comment on this comment saying that they totally agree)

Now, this flitterific eIRISH article is now available for an entire non-eRepublik based fan page (group of people, that is) to view. Let's say there are 85 fans of this particular page. That's 85 chances that someone will click on it and love it and want to join.

Now let's say that Irish Princess comments on the comment that Mr. eIrish has left on this particular fan page. And now let's pretend that one of the fans of this particular fan page (not connected to eRepublik in any way) happens upon his comment on the comment and says to herself:
"Wow! I am a fan of this fan page and so is this Irish Princess girl. She looks really cool. I will ask her to be Facebook friends with me."

Irish Princess of course says yes.
Now, every time IP comments on or hits the "like" button on something, this new friend will be alerted. If this new friend decides to comment on a comment related to eRepublik because the Irish Princess has commented, ALL OF THE NEW FRIEND'S FRIENDS will be alerted. That's WHO KNOWS how many new people that could possibly happen upon eIreland!

In short:
If we put together a small little program that would require a person to find aforementioned fan pages and gather eIrish citizens to become fans and "Like" or comment on links about eIreland, we could surely find more recruits.

Admin's Facebook Crazyness=Not so crazy anymore.

Closing

So recruitment is biggest problem. Government is working on it and has some new ideas. If interested in being minister of recruitment or Ministry of Facebook apply to moo. Thanks Irish Princes, John Gormley, OJ, and Celtic Tiger for your contributions to this article.