The 23-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is getting a lot of on-the-job training as of late. His most recent lesson is: ink a licensing deal before linking to the application.
News wire service Reuters is reporting Hasbro and Mattel are demanding that Facebook remove the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to copyright infringement. The application was not actually made by Facebook, and was in fact created for Facebook by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. Facebook does however host the game and promotes it.
Scrabulous, which seems to me (and Hasbro) identical in concept to Scrabble, is currently one of the ten most popular applications on Facebook. So, as you might expect, fans of the game are up in arms about the possibility of losing Scrabulous. A Save Scrabulous Facebook group has formed since the bad news and is currently at 4,000 members.
One member of the Save Scrabulous group commented, "I bought the board game because of this application. What more do they want? I saw it, I bought their game... THEY made money from Scrabulous being there."
That brings up a good point. Aren't Hasbro and Mattel benefiting from people playing Scrabulous? Many more members of the Save Scrabulous group have at least claimed Scrabulous inspired them to buy the board game Scrabble.
Sure, Scrabulous is a blatant knock-off of Scrabble, and Hasbro and Mattel probably have a very solid case against Scrabulous, but sometimes companies need to step back and look at how their legal actions will affect them from a public relations stand point.
In the meantime Zuckerberg can add another notch to his I-learned-the-hard-way Facebook belt.
Wake up Scott, this isn't a gaffe...this is opporunity for Zuckerberg...
He's getting a ton of free press reporting how popular facebook is, and also random facebookers are being quoted...
Hasbro/Mattel will end up doing something with facebook...probably, after a while. If they run their own site, they will realize they can't get the audience facebook can deliver...
and because of your reporting, other big name brands will start thinking about their own products and want to get in on it...
Facebook would easily push the scrabulous guys out if mattel came in....
Right on. Seize the moment, Scott and everyone else. Facebook is popular with all ages not just tweens. II like it more than Linkedin (not friendly to mixing friends with business) and Myspace (too cumbersome and geared toward non-INDYs).
I'd recommend any commercial entity have a "rooftop under the stars brainstorming party"tonight, how to leverage Facebook. I.e., Scrabulous, I play it with my suppliers, uncles, sisters, friends and people I want to do business with. Downright cool, and I already have a Scrabble game and bought 3 more for people for holiday gifts in 07.
Don't take Scrabulous away from Facebook. I love it and will be disappointed in Mattel, etc. if it is removed.
Why doesn't Hasbro just buy Scrabulous and leave it on there? It is a bad business decision for them to shut it down -- they risk boycotts of all Hasbro products by millions of angry facebook users who will not soon forget their favorite facebook game has been denied. Wake up, get smart, and make a deal, Hasbro!
Sean B. has a very good idea. Hasbro/Mattel should just buy
Scrabulous and leave it on Facebook.
This dispute reminds me of something I heard about some years
ago. When singer/songwriter Paul Simon came out with his song
"Kodachrome" in 1973, Kodak filed a lawsuit against him because
Kodachrome is a registered trademark and Simon hadn't asked Kodak's permission to use it. However, Kodak dropped the suit
when lawyers told them that the huge hit song was giving their brand all kinds of free advertising.
If playing Scrabulous encourages those who play it to go out and
buy the Scrabble board game, then that's a good thing, but young Mr. Zuckerberg should have played by the rules and gotten permission from Hasbro/Mattel, first.
(BTW, Suzanne, what's an INDY? Not everyone is well-versed in that text-messaging shorthand, especially if you're beyond a certain age group. :-)