Posts tagged facebook

It’s not every day you hear about a game which entices someone into buying a brand new laptop just to play it – especially when the game is a Facebook app and the ’someone’ is not necessarily your typical gamer.

The new craze sweeping the world of Facebook is, of course, Farm Town or FarmVille, both near enough the same game - a type of farmy simulation where you build and manage your very own farm. Sounds familiar? It will if you have played Harvest Moon, the popular multi-platform franchise.

A rivalry has emerged between FarmVille and Farm Town with fans taking a staunch allegiance to their favourite. Farm Town came first, but the still in beta FarmVille looks to have won through with over 33 million monthly active users. Farm Town has fallen behind in comparison with over 18 million monthly active users. A slicker game than its rival, FarmVille succeeds with emphasis on interactions with your Facebook friends and better graphics.

Farm Town was developed by software company SlashKey and released in February. FarmVille followed suit in July from the hands of Zynga, who are already known for their copycat games. They fell in hot water earlier this year when they were sued for releasing Mafia Wars, a copy of another popular Facebook game, Mob Wars.

So, why has this simple format of a game appealed to so many people? Maybe it’s the joy of tending to your crops, maybe it’s the way you can add your friends’ farms to be your neighbours or maybe it’s a magic feeling of reaching the next level. Who knows?

Whatever it is, the games are doing something right. Before you know it, you’ve gone and got yourself addicted, checking your farm all the time, waiting for the minute when you can harvest your patch of strawberries.

Of course, you need a Facebook account to be able to play the games, something which is not desirable for all people. Yet, as Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking site, any game has high possibilities for success.

Facebook has attracted a wide range of people with many older members of society joining to link up with old friends and work colleagues. Some have heard of Farm Town and FarmVille and signed up for Facebook just to play it. People have been known to rush home in order to harvest their crops at the optimal time.

This phenomenon is still rising and we’re yet to know how high. The games have their differences so try them out and find out which one you prefer.

This feature was published on Geeks.co.uk.

As one of the World’s most used and talked about social networking sites, can Facebook’s Wednesday re-launch keep the attention of its users and hold down competition from new rival, Twitter?  To keep you going until then, here’s 10 things you never thought you would know about everyone’s favourite distraction tool.

1.  Standing proudly at 175 million active users worldwide, if Facebook were a country, it would have a population almost as large as Brazil.

2.  Its population is aging – the fastest-growing demographic is over 30.

3.  5,000 is currently the maximum number of friends allowed – but this is soon to become unlimited…

4.  …but, the average user has only 120 friends.

5.  It was only in September 2006 that anyone with an email address was allowed to register – the site was initially made for Harvard students.

6.  Not even an exclusive photo sharing site, it is now the world’s number one place to share photos, serving 15 billion photos every day.

7.  The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has his own profile on rival networking site, Twitter.

8.  The company has over 700 employees from its 11 worldwide offices.

9.  The domain name was once www.thefacebook.com until changing to current www.facebook.com in August 2005.

10.  Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, served as the Director of Online Organising for Barack Obama’s famed 2008 presidential campaign.

This feature was published on BUzz.