FarmVille Freak – #1 Official Fan Page

"I can't stop watching my crops!" – FarmVille Freak

Zynga will be making an appearance at SXSW (pronounced South By Southwest) in our home state of Texas!

SXSW is held every year in Austin, Texas and in honor of the 2010 events Zynga will be hosting a party in the Lone Star State. The musical guests for this event will be The Constellations and Metric .

The event will take place on Tuesday, March 16th and  is titled “Rock With the Big Dog”.  Hopefully on that day, we will all be celebrating the much anticipated release of the FarmVille Dog!

What do you think? Will any FarmVille Freaks be attending SXSW or Zynga’s event?

Zynga SXSW 2010 Invite

Zynga Invites You To

ROCK WITH THE BIG DOG at SXSW

Tuesday March 16^th

8:00 PM to 11:00 PM

At the Levi’s Fader FORT
(one day before it officially opens to the public)

1101 East 5th Street, Austin, TX

- – - – - – - – - -

Cocktails, Hors d’oeuvres, Games and

Musical performances by The Constellations and The Metrics

Guests must be over 21 to attend

Please RSVP by March 12th

Click the following link for more information and the RSVP: http://zynga-levis-fader-fort.eventbrite.com/

Of all the millions of people that play FarmVille, there is no doubt some celebrities farming it up too!

As reported by DreamCreeper.com, lately, some celebrities have come out of the closet about their virtual farming addictions. It is rumored that Lady Gaga, Wyclef Jean, AnnaLynne McCord, Avril Lavigne, Ellen and Rachael Ray play FarmVille in their spare time. Who else is farming? We know Dr. Phil isn’t a fan of FarmVille.

This makes us wonder if any of you celebrity farmers out there are also FarmVille Freaks?  I’m hoping Lady Gaga is one.

FarmVille Freak Harry's Lady Gaga Farm Tribute (Click to enlarge)

In the past few days Zynga has been accused of misleading players regarding the FarmVille Haiti Earthquake Relief campaign.

A Brazilian newspaper and blog claimed that Zynga did not give all of proceeds to the charity. Gawker.com also investigates the same claims.  However, there seems to be some confusion surrounding the controversy that has to do with misinformed outlets with very little FarmVille experience.

As a FarmVille player it was clear to me that with the first Sweet Seeds for Haiti campaign (prior to Earthquake) that 50% of the proceeds would benefit Haiti, as it was precisely stated by Zynga. With the second campaign for Haitian Earthquake Relief (after earthquake), Zynga promised to give 100% of proceeds to benefit Haiti.

Purchasing the virtual good of the White Corn seeds was the way in which FarmVille farmers donated to the Haiti Earthquake relief. Upon purchasing or donating,  you were given the option to choose the amount you wanted to donate for your seeds, with a minimum purchase of 25 FV$ or farm cash.

Saying that Zynga promised to give 100% and only gave 50% is a misconception of words and an apparent lack of FarmVille knowledge, as there were two completely separate FarmVille Haiti donation campaigns.

You can read one article about the controversy including Zynga’s response here:

Gawker.com –  ”Scam-Trafficking Games Company Insists Its Haiti Charity Was Not a Scam Too”

What do you think? As a FarmVille Freak were you confused about the donations for the FarmVille Haiti Earthquake Relief campaign?

As mentioned on FarmVille Freak, on Tuesday, Microsoft’s search engine Bing offered FarmVille players 3 free farm cash for becoming a fan of Bing on Facebook. In just one day the number of fans grew by 400,000 people.

Considering the results of this successful campaign, we can probably expect more in-game corporate sponsored advertisements offering FarmVille perks in the future.

This offer was only available for one day!

Inside Facebook featured an interesting article about this integration of brand advertising in social gaming and mentioned FarmVille Freak,

“It appears that users do in fact appreciate advertising, and offers in particular, when they’re easy to find and clearly valuable. FarmVille-focused blog FarmVille Freak noted the Bing campaign in a post yesterday, and polled its readers to see what they thought. The question was: “Will you be clicking the Bing FarmVille Sponsored Link?” The possible answers were “Yes, I love Farm Cash!,” “No, I hate Bing! Long live Google!” and “Maybe, would like the Farm Cash, not Bing!” So far, 68% of respondents, or more than 3,500 people, have vote for the first option. Granted, readers of a blog about a social game are probably more interested in Farm Cash than the average player, but still an interesting data point.”

“You can read the entire article here:

Inside Facebook, “Bing’s Facebook Page Gets 400,000 New Fans in a Day Through Ad Offer in FarmVille” by Eric Eldon

InsideSocialGames.com featured FarmVilleFreak in an article about the rising online communities for social games including FarmVille!

They had some really nice things to say about FarmVille Freak and our community, even comparing it to the dedicated fan sites of World of Warcraft – WoW!

FarmVille Freak Total Domination

Also, one of our favorite banners, made by a FarmVille Freak, is mentioned in the article for its stellar good looks. Thank you to all FarmVille Freaks for your continued support, and for helping make FarmVilleFreak.com a great place to be for FarmVille enthusiasts.

You can read the entire article here:

“Social Games Plant the Seeds for Growing Online Communities” by Chris Morrison

Here are a few excerpts:

“You can see FarmVille’s outsized influence above, through the growth ofFarmVille Freak. This blog is definitely an outlier in terms of growth. It’s also at the forefront in its design. The top banner shows off the blog’s visual chops, while the stories are short and to the point, with a good mix of news, feature reviews and hints on how to get ahead.”

“That’s not all there is to the site, either. There’s also a chat room, FAQ,forum and gallery — the site is actually quite large. In some ways, FV Freak is beginning to resemble the much larger dedicated sites that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft have inspired.”

“This growth of gaming blogs into multi-faceted communities, with different activities for a range of players, may be the direct result of the growing complexity of games like FarmVille. Web gaming has always had large sites like Kongregate and MSN Games that double as gaming portals and community sites, but websites following particular games are rare.”

Would you like to receive 3 free farm cash?

Microsoft strikes again! You can now get 3 free  farm cash for becoming a fan of Microsoft’s search engine Bing!

You can access this sponsored link offer through FarmVille. The offer will be located underneath your FV farm home page on the bottom right.

Get 3 FREE Farm Cash

Become a fan of Bing and get FREE Farm Cash now! Whether you want to buy a horse or a tree, Bing can help you decide!

FarmVille Sponsored Link: Bing aka Microsoft

FarmVille Become a Fan of Bing (Click to enlarge)

FarmVille Bing on Facebook

FarmVille 3 Farm Cash for Bing fan (Click to enlarge)

FarmVille Freak Team hopes that the Hawaii Tsunami is over hyped and non destructive!

Are there any FarmVille Freaks in Hawaii right now? Keep us posted on how you are doing and whats going on!?

As if FarmVille wasn’t already addicting enough, we are steps closer to being able to play on our cellphones.

Smartphones are smart, but still lacking features that would enable farmers to tend to their farms on the go via cellphone. One reason that prevents us from playing Flash driven games like FarmVille on our cellphones is because current smartphones cannot fully support Flash content.

The alpha testing models of Android smartphones, as featured in the video below, have capability of playing FarmVille. It is hopeful that future Droid models will be able to smoothly run games like FarmVille.

For more details read here:

Flash game FarmVille demoed on Nexus One

CNN.com featured an article about FarmVille and other Zynga games!

The article seeks to explain social gaming and the virtual community of 75 million FarmVille farmers that includes a demographic of new gamers, many of which have been virtually ignored. At least half of the farmers are women, it is estimated that about “60 % are women and 40% are men” (Gross, CNN 02/23). Typically, women have been ignored by traditional gaming platforms.

What makes FarmVille so successful is that it is universal and covers a broad spectrum that reaches across all cultures. Everyone knows about farming, no matter where you live. Its uncomplicated nature does not require you to know background information or experience to understand the basic concepts of farming- plow, plant, grow. It is a game whose players range from teenagers to senior citizens. It can be played with little experience or knowledge, but still be appealing and enjoyable.

There is a love or hate relationship with FarmVille and Facebookers. You either play the game and love it or wish it would just go away. Many of the traditionalist Facebookers are annoyed by the constant FarmVille newsfeed notifications and posts that clutter their Facebook pages.

However, 75 million people later FarmVille is still happily accepting new farmers and does not appear to be going away anytime soon. If anything, it has become an interesting model for social games and the gaming industry’s future and the possibilities ahead.

What do you think is so interesting about FarmVille that so many people play? Why do you play?

FarmVille Game Statistics

Read the article on CNN here:
CNN.com “The Facebook Game that millions love (and hate)” by Doug Gross

Unwither is currently enabled for every farmer while FarmVille works on some technical issues including out of sync errors and gifts.  Your crops will not wither during this period.

FarmVille Unwither For All (Click to Enlarge)