Image by k1v1n via FlickrScrabulous is an app on Facebok set up by two Indian brothers – no need to learn the rules if you have played Scrabble. But with 600,000 daily users (addicts) and income rumoured at $25,000 per month, the owners of Scrabble are calling time. So Mattell and Hasbro have written to Facebook asking for the app to be removed – so much easier than dealing with the two brothers I guess.
However we learned from Reid “Glug” Hoffman of LinkedIn on his flying visit to the Cambridge Cluster earlier this year that it is a rare skill to make a social network that connects or an app that appeals to so many users. Perhaps Mattell and Hasbro would be better bringing the two brothers in house and getting all their other games up and working as apps.
But as an inventor, I am on the side of the big boys this time – Scrabulous could have made more effort to make a new game but then no one would have known the rules!
They have! The brothers closed the site down and re-launched it with big changes such as circular shapes instead of square. But the test must be – do we know the rules from playing Scrabble? The legal beavers must be relishing the fees. So much better to buy the brothers out as I say above. One lesson is that you do not have think of Equity Fingerprint, the business plan resource, if you “borrow” someone else’s ideas as your start-up costs are slashed – a triple letter score! At least Bill Gates and Paul Allan paid for DOS and the global rights.
