In the last three weeks I have noticed a decrease in filesharing. I considered that it might be a response to the unseasonably warm weather that Sydney is experiencing with people prefering to get outside than huddle over their computers.

I may be wrong. The population of Sydney appear to be too busy with other things to worry about file-sharing……

---

The End is Nigh – Pack up your Children……

We have all heard the doomsayers claiming that the internet
is about to run out of resources, that Bittorrent and eMule are killing all the
bandwidth.

 

Well the doomsayers are wrong. Torrent and eMule failed. VoD
(Video on Demand) came close, but even that was made room for – mainly by
throttling Torrent and eMule. 

 

However the structure and design of the new game from Zynga,
may do just that.

And it would appear similar throttling is now occurring,
implemented not by a service provider or a Telco, but the most popular social
networking site.

 

With the plethora of games now available on Facebook, the
boffins at Facebook are filtering, censoring and introducing user caps on
Farmbook users.

 

  (HUH!?)

 

“Sorry, you can not send any more gifts – Try tomorrow”.

 

Unfortunately, with over eleven million gameplayers per day,
Farmville is possibly stretching the Facebook resources to the max.

 

Farmbook (and other popular games) have assisted
Facebook in rising through the ranks so that they now alternate between slot
three and slot two on the Alexa rankings.

Google also must be anticipating the forthcoming attack on
their dominant number one spot and watching the Facebook steamroller with some
anticipation.

 

Why? How ?

 

Farmville and the other interactive avatar games require
regular visits to maintain game status and “harvest” the crops.

 

This is no longer about teens idly emoting about how sucky
their individual lives are.

This is about networking on a scale beyond anything I have
seen in my lifetime.

 

Networking your Friends.

 

Facebook used to be about a closed user group of 10-20
friends that gradually expanded.

 

Some have attempted to turn it into a marketing goldmine so
that various MLM’s can be successfully created.

 

Unfortunately today’s generation appear far more interested
in uncomplicated simple competitive pleasures of constructing an ideal
paradise/haven/escape from reality, than watching the latest broadcast news or
even  more samo samo reality TV,

 

The content companies have totally disregarded the effect of
games on their sales of competitive entertainment options.

 

The Ultimate People Networking Tool.

 

Would appear to be a game that requires the player to have
more and more “neighbours” to be able to climb/advance  to the next level.

 

The Farmville Developers have created a Fan page which grew
from 500k users on August 22 to 649,276
fans two minutes ago and has grown to 650,181 now…… refreshing the page
gives me 650,204 therefore, the Farmville Fan Club (not the game – just the fan
club) is growing at 17 users per second.

 

Here is an update from the Farmville team to their fan
club…..

 

FarmVille
10 million farmers visited FarmVille today, y'all! I ain't all that sure I have
that many grains in my silo! The FarmVille Team wishes to thank every last one
of you for playing FarmVille. This is truly an amazing day. http://tinyurl.com/pex66g

tinyurl.com

Source: tinyurl.com

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7,727 people LIKE this.

And 4,490 made comments ???????

 

Holy shit. What would Coca Cola or IBM, President Obama, Prime Minister Rudd or even Google do with attention like that ?

Why they could actually takeover the world.

Move over TV Networks, Newspapers and hell – anyone else who
thinks they can get to todays online population. A new attention paradigm has
arrived.

 

The media companies could learn a lesson here – but I doubt that they will. Which is a shame.

As an experiment in Social Trust, Farmville has managed to instill a desire for game advancement that exceeds the normal commonsense of most of the planets population – i.e.: “Before I become friends with you on Facebook – how do I know that you're not a weirdo, a child molestor or a phishing scammer trying to steal my identity”.

These days the new entry price for friendship would appear to be “Do you play Farmville?”

I think that is both interesting and extremely scary.

The next president of the USA will probably be called “Zynga Farmville”.

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