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I seem to spend most of my life now wasting my time doing pointless things online. And, like, many aimless surfers, I joined Facebook so that I could "reconnect" with people I barely knew in high school and university and pretend I have more friends than I actually have in real life.

Unfortunately, that endeavour seems doomed to failure as there's already a younger, stronger Adam Swimmer on Facebook who has over 300 more friends than I do. (Oh well, at least I'm the Adam Swimmer that comes up first in a Google search.)

So my Facebook life (not counting the odd television or movie quiz) mainly consists of playing Scrabulous. For the few of you who aren't aware, Scrabulous is an unsanctioned online Scrabble game that was first available at Scrabulous.com but has gained notoriety as an extension or application for the social network that allows you to play other users who have the app installed.

Of course, if you've played it, you know it's clunky at best. Because it has so many users and Facebook's a wonky site to begin with, the app often doesn't load properly and takes forever it to acknowledge your move. And unless all the players are online at the same time the game is slow as hell. It's akin to playing bridge by mail. (Even if you are online at the same time, you won't know if your opponent has gone unless you're manually refreshing the page over and over. It can be quite annoying.)

Still, despite it's flaws, it's addictive. Whether it's sneaking in a move against a colleague at work, or wondering what kind of cheat my friend must be using that allowed him to get a bingo (using all seven of his letters) for each of his first three moves, I'm still logging in constantly to see if it's my turn in any of my games.

And the popularity is incredible. At the time of me writing this, the game has 520,835 daily active users on Facebook. One fan has even wrote a song about it.

But Hasbro and Mattel, who jointly own the trademark for Scrabble are trying to shut Scrabulous down. Now normally, on issues of piracy, I'm on the side of the little guys. But the Scrabulous makers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla are far from the little guys. According to an article from Forbes, they make roughly $25,000 a month in advertising from their product. So it's only natural that Hasbro and Mattel get a piece of that pie.

Sure, it was the Agarwalla brothers that came up with the Facebook app (on the suggestion of a user, apparently) but the game is obviously a rip-off of the board game. Even the name is similar. And their site does somewhat undermine any online scrabble sites that actually license the game.

But I'm conflicted. If it's shut down, I will have to find something else online to keep me from doing work. So I have thought about joining one of the many Save Scrabulous groups. Maybe I'll even sign the online petition. And in the long run, it obviously will be more profitable for both sides if they were to work together to make Scrabulous a better and more popular app. (Of course, if the toy companies and the Agarwallas do join forces, it will probably become a paid service. And then another pair of computer geeks will have to come up with a new knockoff.)

As for the future of the game, I honestly don't know. On Friday, the Facebook app was not working, leading some to believe the game was already dead. But currently Scrabulous is back online. So feel free to challenge me to game if you want while we still we can. Or if it's down by the time you read this, just become my Facebook friend as I'll have nothing else to do but amass a digital army to overtake my Vaughan namesake.

About G4 in Canada
G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

A Scrabulous mess

January 28, 2008

By Adam Swimmer - G4 Canada