One of the neat things we get to do behind the scenes is stay up late at night, guzzle Diet Dr. Pepper, surf the net, stumble across pop culture stories the MSM in Winnipeg never gets to until it is waaaay too late, and brainstorm about how it relates to our audience.
Exhibit A: this online story about Facebook dropping a mega-popular application.
Scrabulous pulled from Facebook in US and Canada
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080729/tc_afp/lifestyleuscanadainternetgamecompanyfacebookhasbro_080729231906
Tue Jul 29, 7:17 PM
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - The creators of online Scrabble knock-off Scrabulous said Tuesday they have pulled their application from US and Canadian Facebook pages due to a lawsuit filed by game-making giant Hasbro.
"This is an unfortunate event and not something that we are very pleased about, especially as Mattel has been pursuing the matter in Indian courts for the past few months," Scrabulous co-creator Rajat Agarwalla told AFP.
"We sincerely hope to bring our fans brighter news in the days to come."
Scrabulous.com was launched by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla in India in 2005 and rocketed to popularity two years later after they released a version as a free "add-on" application for Facebook.
More than 500,000 people reportedly played the online word game daily on Facebook.
Facebook confirmed that Agarwalla and his brother disabled the Scrabulous application as a result of a legal demand from Hasbro, which owns the Scrabble trademark and copyright in the United States and Canada.
"We have had to restrict our fans in the USA and Canada from accessing the Scrabulous application on Facebook until further notice," Agarwalla said in an email exchange.
Hasbro on July 25 filed a lawsuit in US federal court against Scrabulous and sent a notice demanding Facebook remove the popular game from the hot social-networking website.
Toy and game manufacturers Hasbro and Mattel, which share ownership of the Scrabble trademark, asked Facebook in January to remove the renegade online version of its game from the website.
-snip-
A game so popular that in and of itself, it has become a reference point about this generation. Exhibit B:
At the height of its television popularity in the late 1990s, "The X-Files" was one of those shows that, thanks to its intricate narratives, could generate endless Internet chatter about the smallest plot points, both real and imagined. Like modern-day Web surfers who play Scrabbulous at the expense of sleep, those "X-Files" aficionados were so eager for anything related to the show that they helped make 1998's first spinoff movie, "X-Files: Fight the Future," a minor hit, grossing nearly $84 million.
(John Van Horn, LA Times, July 23 - http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-word24-2008jul24,0,6192739.story )
SO ... off goes the story in an email to Young Josh, our tech expert extra-ordinaire. Herein our email exchange, some verbiage reduced for clarity and good manners.
I haven't played it myself, but what I've heard from others (Rick the
Boss's status statements included) is that Scrabulous was much, much
better than what Hasbro put up in its place.
Cheers!
_ J
> I don't know anyone who didn't play that game religiously. It gave their #@* moldy old brand life with a new generation. I see the potential for a backlash as a tremendous risk and virtually inevitable. We should do a story about it.
M
Agreed. After it first hit big, I'd come into classes and people would
be taunting each other about their next Scrabulous move. It was huge.
It'll definitely be a good story for callers to comment on. Everyone (except me, because I'm a giant loser that way) has played it, everyone'll miss it, everyone will have something to say.
There's something to be said for the way Paramount worked with Star Trek fans to create a culture, instead of suing the +?^! out of them. And
these days, when almost everyone is trying to revive old brands and IP
instead of creating new ones, an opportunity like Hasbro had with
Scrabble/Scrabulous is a huge one. Too bad they squandered it.
_ J
> Hey I never played it either but even I have something to say about this.
M
We totally win at life, then. ;)
Cheers!
_ J
> Um, who owns the game of Life? We wouldn't want to be sued
M
Hahahaha! Nice. :P
I couldn't tell you -- I'm an atheist. ;)
_ J
> The way they act, so are Hasbro.
M
True enough!
_ J
****************
And as I predicted, today's update from the International Herald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=14878128
Web fans fume over Scrabble-Scrabulous fight
By Heather Timmons
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
"Boycott Hasbro!"
The rallying cry started after fans of Scrabulous, an online knockoff of the classic board game Scrabble, woke up Tuesday to find that their game had been abruptly removed from Facebook.com, the social networking site.
To make matters worse, people who tried to download the official Hasbro version of Scrabble found that it did not work either. The authorized game had been the victim of "a malicious attack" Tuesday morning, its developer said - an attack that came right on the heels of the sudden disappearance of Scrabulous.
-snip-
The backlash was instant. Bloggers denounced Hasbro, howls of protest flooded message boards, and new Facebook groups were created with names like "Down with Hasbro." Although some people spoke up to defend Hasbro's rights, most people jeered at the company, calling it everything from "short-sighted" to "technologically in the dark" to "despicable."
"You didn't have the smarts or initiative to come up with as good a product at the boys did, so your alternative is to mess with the superior product?" said one typical comment on Facebook. "Do you think that the thousands of folks who were enjoying this superior application will now come running to your inferior product? Hmmmm....
"BOYCOTT HASBRO!!!"
Hasbro, for its part, was keeping a stiff upper lip. It issued a statement Tuesday inviting fans to try out the "authentic" game of online Scrabble, introduced this month by Electronic Arts.
But on Tuesday, people who downloaded Electronic Arts' "Scrabble Beta" were greeted with a message that said, "We'll be back up shortly." On Tuesday afternoon, Electronic Arts said technical problems had caused the crash; by early evening the company said its game had "experienced a malicious attack this morning, resulting in the disabling of Scrabble on Facebook."
Scrabble Beta had attracted about 15,000 daily users and mixed reviews, including criticism from Facebook reviewers for its "pathetic" upload time. The companies said they were trying to address such issues.
We're offering support and counselling to all listeners suffering Scrabulous Withdrawal Syndrome, for the rest of this week, starting at 4 PM, just call 780-5425.
