Image via CrunchBaseI think it has been almost a year. I stopped after the game started acting funny. It simply would not load for me. Anu Shukla could not understand. She thought maybe my blogging stole me from Farmville. My conspiracy theory was that Mark Pincus was personally punishing me for having taken credit for an idea.
I tried the game on a Mac at an Apple store. Last year. Still not loading. Was that a Flash/Apple thing? I don't know.
Anyways, my Chrome Notebook did not arrive, and recently I bought myself a new computer, a PC, after having tried a Mac for a few weeks: I liked it. But if all you need is a browser almost all the time, the PC works just fine. And costs matter. Sam Walton is my hero.
Image via CrunchBaseIf the CEO of a hot startup himself emails you without any prompt, I think you have a right to feel a little popular. So I got an email from the PlanCast CEO a few days back. It almost felt like the emails I got from Mark Pincus in early 2009. Pincus has become big since, and he does not respond to my emails no more.
I came across PlanCast through Charlie O'Donnell's events newsletter that he sends out every Monday morning. One event linked to its page on PlanCast, so I RSVPd, and ended up discovering the site. I have been hooked since. It is a great place to find events.
I have not added any events myself yet, but that is about to change.
Disney just expanded in the entertainment space: it went ahead and bought Zynga competitor Playdom. This for some reason reminds me of Yahoo's attempt to buy FourSquare months back, although the parallels end fast. Yahoo is a scatterbrained company, it occupies all sorts of spaces. Disney is more focused on entertainment. And Yahoo did not go ahead and buy a FourSquare competitor instead. I think it was for a lack of a capacity to digest.
This purchase is of interest to me because I just blogged about Zynga a few days back: Zynga: The Google Of Games?
I have a feeling Mark Pincus' profile at the New York Times a few days back where he says in no uncertain terms that social gaming is a big, new, fundamental space online might have hastened efforts on Disney's part to make this move.
Is this like Google buying Android? Or is this more like one of those Barry Diller purchases? Time will tell. This might be somewhere in between.
I got started with Farmville in December. I was reading about it a lot. Finally I gave in. Obviously I started the poorest farmer in my neighborhood. Soon I was the richest. I was hooked to the game. I entered the fray out of business curiosity, and I ended up really appreciating some of the social aspects of the game.
Then not long back a friend of mine who I did not know had more points than me befriended me and now he was the richest farmer in my neighborhood. I was working hard to win back my title, and that is when the Pied Piper episode happened.
I tried the usual remedies like uninstalling and reinstalling Flash. No effect whatsoever.
I am thinking perhaps I attained Farmville nirvana somewhere along the way, and there is nothing more left to do for me at Farmville. That is an explanation I could live with.
In the mean time I have focused my energies on blogging and actively commenting at other people's blogs. That also feels like farming.
A few days back the image above started showing up when I loaded Farmville for me. And I am like, yes! I suggested this directly to Mark Pincus. He said he liked the idea, but that was a while back. Looks like finally he has gotten around to doing it.
I came to Farmville late. I have not been much of a gamer. But Farmville was talked about so much in the blogosphere. And the TechCrunch dude Mike Arrington had just given the game quite a beating. Some of my friends were on the game. What had most got me interested was there were reports Farmville was using the Facebook platform to beat Facebook itself in the monetization game. That piqued my interest. It also helped that I grew up in a farming family. Have you watched the milking of the cow/buffalo - by hand - the milk that you drank an hour later? I have.
So I got onto the game and was hooked. So hooked I went on to become the richest farmer in my neighborhood, bought a million dollar villa, and so on.
Note, Anu Shukla is one of my neighbors. She just might be my very best neighbor. And, by now, she has the most beautiful farm in my entire neighborhood. She has really taken to farming these past few weeks. There is something to be said of people who sell their companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. When they take to farming, they really take to farming.
I have said several times in Fred Wilson's comments sections, (Fred Wilson's Insight) and I will say it again, Farmville is the media savior, it is not the iPad. Look at the Farmville business model, 99% of the users do not pay anything, and Mark Pincus is not up in arms about it. In fact, Farmville has been teaching Facebook how to make money. Trying to walk away from the browser is not a good idea. Trying to create artificial scarcities and artificially high prices is not a good idea.
Fred Wilson is one of the pillars of the New York tech community, and he has been a brilliant investor for over a decade. I have lost count of how many times I came across a truly exciting company only to find out later that was one of Fred’s portfolio companies. If he were not a big investor, and only a blogger, he would still be considered a brilliant visionary.
I have not read all 22 of your “Scamville” posts. And I don’t pretend to have followed all the nuances of your argument.
And TechCrunch is my favorite blog by far. I read it more than I read any other news outlet of any kind, period. So I have respect for its founder and mascot.
You seem to suggest something murky might have been going on, but now, thanks to your work, much of that has been corrected. If that is the case, this story has had a happy ending.
As for Farmville the game, I can vouch for it personally. I have been an avid player for weeks. I never spent a single dime on it. And I am about to buy a million dollar villa there.
I had an email exchange with Mark Pincus only a few days back. I suggested he add a Farmers’ Market to Farmville. He said that was a good idea.
I am glad all three of you are around. What can I say?
By the way, I read those comments by Fred in the original at his blog before I saw them here. Good to know you and I sometimes end up at the same blog in some of the same comments sections.
My first email to Anu was standard. I have more than 130 lingering friend requests from people I don't know. My privacy settings on Facebook are lax. They are set to everyone. So you don't need to be my friend to be able to visit my full Facebook page. But if I don't know you, I am not accepting friend requests.
Hello Anu. Thanks for the friend request. I am open to online only friendships. But we are going to have to exchange a few emails, get to know each other, and become friends first. :-)
My second email to her a few minutes later:
Hey. Wait a minute. After I sent you the email, I googled up your name because it sounded kind of familiar. You are t-h-a-t Anu Shukla. Arrington dragged you into a controversy a few months back. I remember reading in real time.
I am honored you should send a friend request my way. I am accepting it right away.
I am guessing this friend request came from a looong comment I left on TechCrunch earlier in the day. I am going to leave more such long comments in future! :-)
Image via CrunchBaseI think it has been almost a year. I stopped after the game started acting funny. It simply would not load for me. Anu Shukla could not understand. She thought maybe my blogging stole me from Farmville. My conspiracy theory was that Mark Pincus was personally punishing me for having taken credit for an idea. 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tSvRAjjgB6zWVpq-iwaZLFD1YUEKyuYqV038B4Gc7qNGvSIonzU_M8Fs4MSafltNGzR9mrP5R63boAYDMWTmn02JDtsEmaAtaJxF1zRrR6elQ_dBIvNRK3n52rWGgwowFahNAzn35HCESaHebriBjq=s0-d)
. I am guessing the friend request is a direct result of a long comment I left on 
dragged you into a controversy a few months back. I remember reading in real time. 
earlier in the day. I am going to leave more such long comments in future! :-) ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_usXX-QnTFsS06uXoVSx1jFcQLTpSsQe6pzyfGTVfpUrpcK87LJthw1vABy1tb2ZwtdJ_5bqr84xGWFWUYS4gNAmaNdfX50Rq6lup9SdPW8KxRNl6CtPEZkEpqECoG4fWc00BEOORAkBPEc0z3ToSAq=s0-d)
My second email to her a few minutes later: