Wall Street Survivor is an educational website that teaches the basics of finances. Launched in 2005, it uses
gamification
Gamification is the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organizations, and activities by creating similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users. This is generally accomplished thro ...
to teach concepts of the stock market, investing, and general financial planning. The website also provides articles, videos, courses, and other content.
History
Rajat Paharia originally created Wall Street Survivor as a stock investing game that allowed users to practice their knowledge by investing in stocks using fake money. The current version was launched as an add-on to the site in 2012 and presented at the Finovate conference in
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
the same year. The website was gamified using software on the
Bunchball
Bunchball provides a cloud-based software as a service gamification product intended to help companies improve customer loyalty and online engagement using game mechanics.
Overview
Wall Street Survivor has been referred to as
Codecademy
Codecademy is an American online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, and Swift, as well as markup languages HTML and CSS. The ...
for learning about money. The site uses videos, article, and other resources to teach people about personal finance, debt, and investing. Lessons are taught using gamification with users completing missions to get to the next step. Users earn badges and rewards and can also play in fantasy leagues to challenge their friends. The site teaches without using complicated financial jargon.
Wall Street Survivor offers its education through partner websites, mobile applications, and educational institutions including
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
,
Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced content service for financial markets. Articles and research covers a broad range of stocks, asset classes, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and investment strategies. Unlike other equity research platforms, insight ...
,
The Motley Fool
The Motley Fool is a private financial and investing advice company based in Alexandria, Virginia. It was founded in July 1993 by co-chairmen and brothers David Gardner and Tom Gardner, and Erik Rydholm, who has since left the company. The compa ...
, and Daily Finance. The site generates revenue from advertising and referrals.
Reception
The website has been seen in publications including ''
Business Insider
''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...
'', ''
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare.
In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...
'', ''
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'', and ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...