Is Scrabulous Going Bye Bye?
Posted by Nick O'Neill on January 11th, 2008 4:39 PMAccording to Josh Quittner, Hasbro may actually be shutting down the insanely popular Facebook application, Scrabulous. They must be one of the dumbest companies to make such a horrible decision. I have a better idea: acquire Scrabulous. The developers of the application took the time to build the app and profited a minor amount. Eliminating Scrabulous from the applications will surely cause an overall decrease in the site’s traffic.
Yesterday alone there was a whopping 569,206 users on the application. That ranks it the ninth most popular application yesterday. I am willing to bet that the Scrabulous revolt will go far beyong the Beacon revolt that started in the blogosphere. I have to wonder why it took so long for Hasbro to take any action. The application has been accused of violating copywright law for months but now the developers have officially received a letter from Hasbro.
According to Techcrunch, the discussion is now taking place among the lawyers. Are you one of the many Scrabulous users? Do you think we will see a mass exodus from Facebook if the Scrabulous team can’t defeat Hasbro?
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Hasbro should absolutely acquire Scrabulous instead of shut it down. It would be much better for their reputation to acquire the popular app than to shut it down and make users angry. After all, these are probably people that play the board game Scrabble. I know I do.
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Even the facebook staff loves scrabulous.
Maybe they can send some of their magic legal team over
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they're the metallica of facebook!
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I think Hasbro is faced with two bad choices - shutting Scrabulous down, or buying it. Both are likely to have negative impacts on their bottom line - they would have been much better off had Scrabulous never existed. But of the choices now available, buying it has to be the better one. Companies don't prosper by hurting the good will of their customers.
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Can't they ever leave a good thing alone?
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I disagree on this point. An acquisition would not necessarily result in a hit to their bottom line - at least not in the long term. Scrabulous would definitely be a valuable asset.
From the response shown even here in this post, it's no secret it's popular. Hasbro could feed branding and propoganda to 569,206 users every single day (provided Scabulous' users use it everyday). These are hardcore loyal fans of the game. Why throw that away?
Money can always be moved around. They can justify a buyout as a marketing expense.
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On the other hand, if they buy it, they just encourage people to do this to them over and over and over, copying their games.
Seriously, Nick: You idea is stupid and naive.
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Scrabulous has also resulted in me playing more real-world Scrabble, so Hasbro have a clear interest in preserving it. Equally, I can understand them wanting to challenge the makers of the app. It's a clear copyright infringement.
They should settle ahead of going to court and take over the operation of it. They might even find jobs for its developers, without advertising the fact.
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