Scrabulous : A New Obsession !

People are already obsessed with social networking and instant messaging. Aren’t they? Whether at college or work, these both remain the headaches of IT departments. Recent obsession is Scrabulous—the word game which has hit the systems of several users. The cyborgs of this viral fever spread through social networking site Facebook’s group and now Scrabulous has become the top pass-time activity of millions.

Scrabulous, a popular Facebook app, was pleaded to shutdown because the toy maker giant Hasbro found it very similar to their board game Scrabble. Due to its similarity, the app was already popular and this piece news triggered the traffic on Facebook.

People looked upon Hasbro’s allegations as a jealous stupid kid. Hasbro sent notice to Facebook to shutdown and remove the app. The users even warned of going on hunger strike if Facebook removed Scrabulous from apps after Hasbro’s demands. To save it, they even started a group—Save Scrabulous. Made by two Indian brothers for sake of fun, today the site as over 700,000 users bringing the owners about $25,000 per month as advertising revenue.

Being an online game and several users across the globe to compete with adds tinge of excitement and also creates a social platform. Though some players are involved in cheating (yeah, even in this game), there’s nothing much to w00t about except personal glory.

Playing Scrabulous may help vocabulary developments but also wastes thousands of man hours if played at office. The makers of Scrabble believe that the online version can and will affect their sales. While on the other hand, several instances cropped up about people who purchased the board game after playing it online. Slowly realizing the online potential, Hasbro announced that it would come up with an online version of Scrabble with Electronic Arts soon. Seems to us that Hasbro changed its tune pretty quick when it saw a potential business opportunity.