As many already know, Scrabulous, the wildly popular Facebook game based on Scrabble, developed by bothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta, India were sent a cease and desist letter back in January from the lawyers of rights holders to the Scrabble's concept and brand; Hasbro (US and Canada) and Mattel (international), and then latter sued in July. Between January and July, Hasbro licensed the rights to Scrabble to Electronic Arts (warning: superfluous press release) and they began development on the official version of the game.
Brand Hijacking Results in a Win For a Risk Averse Company |
Social Media As Automated Word of Mouth |
Studies indicate that word of mouth is the most influential and trusted source of information for North American consumers when considering a product or service.

Monetizing Social Networks |
This is going to be a short post...
Many social networks are still trying to figure out how to monetize while others are monetizing off of them. People are monetizing Facebook apps, selling Facebook apps and Twitter clients. Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not make it part of your API agreement that any company making a profit from your API needs to give you a cut? The APIs could still be free, and if an app makes money, the API provider gets a piece. After all, isn't the apps success based largely on the technology provided by the API provider? Just seems like it makes sense to me. I'd love to hear your opinion.
Wow, it's been a long time! |
Guess I've been busy, since JANUARY!!! No excuse for that. Big news, Heavybag Media now has an office in Los Angeles, in addition to our New Haven office, which is still fully staffed and humming along wonderfully.
We have been doing a lot of work with some of our clients in the social and professional networking space. It's really an interesting space to be in. Each online community has it's own set of rules, both official and unofficial, and there are new ones popping up all the time. I personally am now on Facebook, bebo, Ning, MySpace, YouTube, Mashable, Twitter, LinkedIn, plus I run this blog. Our company is represented on Ning, MySpace and soon to be Facebook. Though all of these sites are different in their own way, one common thread is the human factor.






