The Anti-Social Media

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Friends don’t let “friends” post crap on their…

by The Anti-Social Media on October 20, 2010 in Facebook, Farmville

Friends don’t let “friends” post crap on their wall.

You can hide it, and you can block it, but that doesn’t mean your “friends” aren’t smearing a stinking pile of crap all over your otherwise nice and pristine wall.

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Zynga’s Cash Cow

by The Anti-Social Media on September 14, 2010 in Farmville, Zynga

If one company is truly evil in the social media world, it is Zynga. The maker of Farmville, Mafia Wars, and a bunch of other similarly mindless Facebook games, Zynga has mastered the art of the casual game that turns into a cultural time and cash suck.

Zynga and Farmville have power. 85 million users of power. Don’t believe me as to what those people can do? Mozilla had to update Firefox because an earlier update broke Farmville. Estimates say Zynga makes about $50 million per month off the small percentage of people who pay for their virtual cow manure.

That’s why Gawker’s article about Zynga’s Platinum Program makes me so sad and angry.

At best, you can describe it as a way to allow international players to spend more with less credit card issues. At worst, you’re giving a gaming company direct access to your bank account to feed an addiction. It reminds me of the phishing e-mails from “African princes and princesses,” except this company actually exists.

Zynga and other social games companies call the people who pay vast sums of money whales. Whales make up a very tiny percentage of players, but bring in a huge amount of money to these companies. It disgusts me that such an option for throwing money away exists and that Zynga feeds people’s addiction with no regard to their financial or mental health.

As a society, we’re supposed to protect and help the people who cannot help themselves. That includes people who are addicts, whether it is from substances or otherwise. We shouldn’t help Zynga get rich because people are addicted to their game and have the ability to spend thousands of dollars on crap that doesn’t exist beyond an electrical charge. Are Farmville and its brethren different than any other computer game? Maybe not, but the ability to throw endless amounts of real money at the company for a few more ones and zeroes of virtual goods isn’t right.

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Social Media @ Work: The Personal Brand

by The Anti-Social Media on March 31, 2010 in Facebook, Farmville, Personal Branding, Social Media @ Work, Twitter, flickr

Employers don’t know what to do with social media at work. You want your employee’s to leverage their networks, but you don’t want them to waste your money by playing Farmville all day. You have to treat your employees like adults, and that might be too much for most employers.

Worst of all, most people don’t understand how social media interacts with work. Yeah, it as fun to tweet how hot that boy at the club is Saturday at 1 am, but try explaining that to a client who sees it Sunday morning. Or maybe they’ll notice all those strange, “artistic” photos you keep posting to Flickr of decapitated Barbie dolls. Probably though, your current or future employer will find ancient photos of you from college that are completely inaccurate to who you are today.

You can’t control everything about yourself on the internet, and you can’t control how anyone uses the internet. All you can do is suggest certain ways to use the tools online and suggest a better picture of who you are. If you don’t think these suggestions are powerful, think again.

People notice what is front of them. That’s why it’s important to be on the first page of Google. People don’t pay attention after that first page. If you work hard on creating a singular vision of yourself, you’ll find most people will only pay attention to that aspect. Because the internet is forever, you’ll have to address the dark crappy corners head on when necessary, but those instances will slowly become fewer and far more in between.

This singular vision is your personal brand. It is your hyper-stylized, ultra-polished version of yourself people want to be near and be friends with. It’s you bumped up a notch, the way you wish you could be. It’s the way you want people to notice you, not the photos of you from high school you can’t escape. If I can become the Anti-Social Media guy in three months, you can become whatever you want to in the same time.

Who will you be in three months? What will your brand be?

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Farmville wins the “Social Networking Game of the Year…

by The Anti-Social Media on February 22, 2010 in Facebook, Farmville, Zynga

Farmville wins the “Social Networking Game of the Year Award,” the worst named award it could possibly win. Can we all agree that Farmville is a game that hijacks a social network, not facilitates networking? The one time anything like networking happened with Farmville to me was when I tweeted I was becoming obsessed with it, and a bunch of crazies followed me and friend requested me just to play Farmville with me. I would never trust anyone who used Farmville to network. NEVER.

I will commend Zynga once again for slowly taking over the world though and being rewarded for it.

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Farmville, or how I learned to stop worrying and love…

by The Anti-Social Media on February 8, 2010 in Facebook, Farmville, Zynga

Farmville, or how I learned to stop worrying and love Zynga.

There was a time I was obsessed with Farmville. If I didn’t harvest my crops on the hour, then plow my fields, then plant new crops for harvest in another 24 hours, I was not a happy man.

This insane loyalty makes Farmville genius. The players are people who play the game at least once daily, if not several times in one day. Additionally, they may play other Zynga games daily, like YoVille, FishVille, PetVille, or Mafia~~Ville~~ Wars.

Think of the cash Zynga must swim in just from advertising on these games, not counting the money people burn changing their real money into Farmville Cash. Zyng’s genius is sickening. Get people obsessed with playing flash games with lots of surrounding advertising, and Zynga watches the money roll in.

What’s craziest is how Zynga says these games are social. If sitting and clicking virtual plants on a virtual farm for hours is social, I don’t want to know what you call Xbox Live. Farmville created a second network of people on Facebook I had to pester constantly for crap to help my virtual farm. Before Farmville, I wondered who my real friends were, now I now it’s people who will fertilize my crops and send me different colored fencing.

Zynga, I, The Anti-Social Media, salute you. By having people sit in the dark at the computer and call it farming with their friends, you have found a way to print money. I can only dream of being as profitable and evil as you.

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