- Image by Dust Storm via Flickr
I mean come on. I had the misfortune of seeing Farmville being used a couple of weeks ago and I was left rather underwhelmed. In fact my whelm has never been more under. What is the attraction?
Now let me just say at this point that I am a total addict to just about anything. I went through my student loan at the bookies, I went through my savings on the bandit at the local cricket club, I had that flaming song from Sonic the Hedgehog going through my head for weeks because it occupied every waking hour of time in my house and I have won the European Cup on Football Manager with a team I took from the Vauxhall Conference to glory in seven short years. Yes I have the addictive personality. (See my earlier post)
Now Farmville. Mmmm Farmville.
I mean what is the attraction? Where is the fun? If I were an actor I would be asking while holding my forehead between thumb and forefinger what is my motivation here? I have friends who spend four hours per day or more asking for nails and things online. I know of others who buy, with physical, real money, imaginary stuff to put their farm together and get things done quicker.
Let me get to the point. I have just read a Tweet by @bartonian, a retweet of @toddkratty:
“Life is short – 2.5 Billion Seconds, make them count!”
Now that might sound like a lot of seconds but bear in mind that about 750 million of them you will be asleep or possibly blind drunk for. Another 100 million you will probably spend reading magazines on the loo. About 200 million will be spent tweeting, creating your social media profiles and worrying about what photos may or may not have been taken of you when you were spending those 750 million seconds asleep or drunk and then uploaded to Facebook. Eating, hopefully about 400 million seconds. Waiting for buses or trains or stuck at airports due to volcanoes around 30 million. Waiting in queues if you live in Spain while trying to do something official, around 500 million seconds… You get the idea. In your few million that remain why on Earth would you want to spend them on Farmville?
And yet get this, there are between 400 and 500 million people who log into Facebook every day and a very, very large minority of that number are checking off their supplies on Farmville.
I am not going to say get a life because there but for the grace of some non existent deity go I, why do you think I avoid it like the plague? But I am going to suggest one thing. The next time you log into Facebook and start doing whatever it is you do on Farmville just think a bit about those seconds that you have in your life and start living more consciously.
Soon I will start suggesting how you can actually spend your four hours per day online rather than playing Farmville. And this all ties in with the current economic situation for many people. If you are not interested just send me a bale of hay or whatever it is you do on Farmville. I will ignore it like I ignore people throwing sheep at me.
Related Reading
1) Guardian Article on Addiction
2) Entrepreneurs and the Addictive Personality
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- Down on the FarmVille (news.bbc.co.uk)
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that’s all very well but you didn’t ask the important question: How many million seconds are spent tweeting on the loo?
And no I’m not.
Oh yes you did!
[...] admin published What The … Is Farmville For. [...]
I’ve just completely ignored Farmville – in fact I don’t really know what it is, and you’ve just confirmed for me that I don’t want to.
Ditto Mike. Don’t fall into the trap. There are thousands of things that you can do online that are much more rewarding and I would say you are a shining example of that
I have actually found Farmville a good stress reliever. It encourages people to collaborate, to work together, as to put it simply, your farm is nothing if no one helps
.
You talk about wasted seconds as if time spent on playing a game is a complete waste of time, but let me assure you there is nothing more therapeutic to a stressful day than going over to Mafia Wars and killing a few of my ‘opponents’ you can’t quite do that in farming. Yet.
Some people have told me it’s good for strategy planning,I have yet to see evidence of that.
I have actually done business over a game of Mafia Wars on Facebook with an American coming to London. Being on Facebook to ‘play’ means I regularly waste precious seconds updating my fanpage and responding to messages asking for help.
Anyone who thinks life is all work and no play, doesn’t have much of a life!
I shall now go and enjoy the sunshine and try not to remember that you have far more of it than me
Ah good to see someone defending Facebook and gaming. My only worry about this comment is that you have done business with an American coming to London. Who did you have wiped out? A member of a certain management team?
;o) Farmville : ok I’m not into Farmville and I don’t really get it : there’s so many other things to do : If you’re gonna spend that kind of time on anything – make it count : let it put money in your pocket: give your time to a charity : help out a neighbour : go for a walk : phone a friend: anything : just don’t send me magic eggs – ok :
now who wants an e-book on crushing your family and friends at Farmville SO BAD they think you’re a frikin farmville ninja natural?
Some good suggestions there Ian. Care to list another 30000 other possibilities?
Farmville used to make my blood boil. Or more precisely, the endless streams of its seemingly inane updates cluttering my Facebook news stream did.
That was until I discovered you can hide application updates in your news stream. Then it was adios Farmville, Mafia Wars, Horoscopes and all the other applications that disinterest me.
But each to their own I say.
The flip side is surely someone amongst your Facebook friends lurks a “real life” friend, perhaps someone from your childhood? Someone fun? Someone who finds YOUR twitter updates autoposted to your Facebook stream, and you in turn is wishing you didnt clutter their news stream with them.
Am talking hypothetically of course Admin, not a personal attack on you!
@nicchick
Good point Nicky and I suppose that many of my friends might get sick of my articles and opinions being expressed from my stream for example. But hey they can unfriend me
When I discovered that I could hide Bejewelled Blitz, Farmville and Horoscopes among other Facebook suddenly became relevant.
I guess the bottom line is that Facebook was not intended as a business tool so perhaps fun applications like Farmville have more place on Facebook that business/networking.
There is, after all, Twitter, LinkedIn etc for business social networking.
Yet more and more businesses are investing time and money in having a presence on Facebook.
The harsh reminder of that we are investing time and money into a platform over which we essentially have very limited control – even the most basic business requirement of collecting contact details – has been highlighted only this morning has Facebook announced out of the blue that landing pages are no longer allowed for Business Pages with less than 10,000 fans or who do not use Google Ads.
But I guess thats a whole different topic Admin…
That is not good at all Nicky. There is still a way to do tweaks to the pages but this has totally effed up our new project lead generation strategy
BTW you can call me Graham!
You can still have personalised FBML pages, just not the landing page.
I guess the next step is finding the loop hole in the Facebook Ads requirement. How much do you need to spend? For how long? What happens when you stop running Facebook Ads, does the landing page become redundant again?
Despite building pages for clients, I make no secret about the fact that I am not a “fan” of Fan Pages and that Facebook is becoming notorious for exercising its right to make changes to its discretion. You do NOT own the data on Facebook. So, no matter what the aim of your Facebook Page is, I would say that its single biggest call to action has to be to either a) drive traffic away from the platform and where you want them to go i.e. your blog or website – a platform that you OWN and CONTROL or b) get “fans” to subscribe so something, anything, so that you are getting valid contact details for your database.
Anyway, enough about Pages. This blog post is about Farmville, right?
p.s. I have just tried to “call” you, Graham
I have changed the name that should show to Graham but it insists on calling me Admin!
This is a great help to people Nicky even though it isn’t about Farmville. I have a couple of people mailing me saying keep the tips coming.
Talk later when we have a better connection