You know what reminds me of that clueless little kid who always gets the joke after everyone else has gotten it, laughed, and moved on to another topic?
Hasbro (HAS) and Electronic Arts (ERTS). (No offense, guys.)
They just announced that they are going to be launching a Scrabble Facebook application later this month. Too bad everyone’s been playing Scrabulous for the last year.
“Millions of Facebook users who have been playing it are unlikely to make the switch,” writes Caroline McCarthy of CNet. “Who says they’ll even notice the presence of the new game?” Too true, too true.
Technically, Electronic Arts is going to be the one actually building this app, since they own the rights to the digital versions of the board game. The rights to the board game seem to be a bit convoluted. While Hasbro owns it here in the US, Mattel owns it elsewhere. Weird.
To be fair, the dynamics of large publically-traded companies make them slower to react to new phenomenon like this. They probably already have a wish list of a thousand things they want to, and need to do. And a Facebook Scrabble game just wasn’t on that list.
That doesn’t change my opinion that they missed a really cool social media marketing opportunity though. They missed it, and a smaller player—Scrabulous—beat them to it.
Precisely what I think – they had their chance and they missed it because they were lazy or incompetent or behind the times. A couple of guys used some brains and now they deserve a reward.
Hasbro missed the boat.
internet speed is so fast that slow companies will have not survive. they should just buy scrabulous and not try for themselves.
I am not going to add the Hasbro Scrabble app. Why should I when I already have a strong record and active games on Scrabulous? The switching costs are not worth it for me.