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So Long Scrabulous? Not So Fast!

July 31, 2008 2:42 PM

By Nick Schifrin, ABC News

All of a sudden, it was gone.

OK, it wasn’t quite gone without any warning. For months the millions of Scrabulous users heard that the ubiquitous Facebook program was in trouble; was being sued by Hasbro, the makers of the original Scrabble; could just disappear at any moment. But really, did anyone think that one day, it would just not be there when we woke up? Does anyone online think anything is ever going to be taken away from them? (Above: Brothers Agarwalla, in their Calcutta offices.)

It was less than a week ago that Hasbro officially sued the two brothers who made Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. On July 29, it was shut down. "Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice,” read the Facebook page. At the same time, Hasbro released an official Scrabble version for Facebook.

A few months ago, when I was based in New Delhi, India, I traveled to Calcutta to interview Rajat and Jayant.

Rajat is the older one, the one who started RJ Software (as in Rajat and Jayant), a company that did some outsourcing work before it started building Facebook applications (Scrabulous first and now Chess Pro).

They wouldn’t talk about the lawsuit that was then still under way -- "No comment on that, actually,” Rajat said when I asked whether Scrabulous had made Scrabble more popular. But they were eloquent in trying to explain what Scrabulous had to say about social networking.

Because while for most people it was simply a game, the program did help modernize Facebook and in so doing, helped make how we interact with each other online more mature.

“If you want to stay in touch with someone, you can't just say, hi, hello, how are you every day. It gets boring. I mean, you can't poke them every day, you can't throw sheep at them. It gets kind of boring. But if you simply play a move at Scrabulous, it's so much more fun,” Jayant told me. “At least you're heading towards something and both people are into the game. And it's just a fun way to keep in touch and I think that's what makes Scrabulous a lot more popular.”  (Above: a screen grab from the unofficial Scrabulous music video.)

Rajat put it this way: We were “adding value to all these people who were part of a social network. Like they had something more to do. They had something more to look at. And because of the wide choice of applications, it's like people can choose what adds value to their daily lives. Like you might want to have an application that tells you about movies, or lets you play some other game than Scrabulous. It can notify you about where your friends are traveling. And those kinds of applications are already out there and I think a lot of people use them and it's giving them more of a reason to use the social networks than to just be in touch with friends.” 

If the old social networking model was spying on singles (Friendster), Facebook offered a way to better mimic real friendships -- you could only see people who gave you access, and interacting with them became about sharing your movie tastes, figuring out how to mutually reduce your carbon footprints, sharing photos with each other and, yes, playing games with them.  

Before Scrabulous, about a year and a half ago, Facebook had 30 million users. Today, it has 90 million users. Of course, not all of that is directly thanks to Scrabulous. But the program that quickly became the most popular game on Facebook was certainly at the top of many Facebook users’ lists when they said what attracts them to the site most.

As for what’s next for Rajat and Jayant –- they didn't wait very long to unveil a new creation. Feels like Scrabble. Kind of looks like Scrabble. Is it Scrabble? Apparently not: Wordscraper.

Oh, and P.S.: If you live outside North America (Scrabulous is still available everywhere else) and want to challenge Jayant to a game, his average score is 300 to 350. And that was while he was playing 16 games at once.

P.P.S.: Don’t miss this lyric from the Scrabulous encomium music video: “L, T, R, S ain't going to get you very far. J, Z, Q, 'Dub, that's the stuff you gotta love.”

July 31, 2008 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (1)

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Posted by: ashley | Jul 31, 2008 3:01:16 PM

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