Periodically, I have Facebook friends that tell me they received a gift or an invitation to play Farm Town or FarmVille.  They want to know if these games are any fun and whether they’re worth playing or not.   My answer is yes, they’re worth playing.

If you’re wondering what Farm Town or FarmVille are, you can visit the “Farm Addicts” website. I think this site does a pretty good job of describing both of these Facebook applications.

My experience

I have been playing Farm Town longer than FarmVille, mostly because I got the invitation to Farm Town first.  I have my opinions on which one is better, but I’ll present you with some of my observations to help you with that choice.  I have written a few blogs on Farm Town.  If you’d like to read these, do a search for “Farm Town” in the upper right hand corner of this blog.

Music:

• Farm Town, my preference is to disable it. It’s not cheerful enough for me.
• FarmVille, my preference is to enable it.  It’s a fun & happy little country feel tune.

Networking opportunities:

• Farm Town,  active networking real-time face to face conversations, you’re interacting and cooperating with others
• FarmVille,  passive networking using signs, you’re mostly playing by yourself

Clicks to accomplish farming tasks:

* = only 2 clicks if the farmer is already on your farm.  For instance, if a farmer is already helping you to harvest, you can hire them to plow for you with 2 clicks.

FarmVille machinery

FarmVille does have machinery that makes farming easier.  The machinery increases your productivity 4x.  Which means, you don’t necessarily need to have other people working your farm.  The only catch is it takes time to get to the unlock level for the machinery, plus the expense of purchasing and operating the machinery.  You have to purchase fuel for the machinery.  I think there’s a lesson in there for everybody.

• Tractor   available after level 12 + 30,000 coins
• Harvester available after level 13 + 30,000 coins
• Seeder    available after level 14 + 30,000 coins
• Fuel Refill = 3 FarmVille bucks

Other notes:

• Farm Town, will not let you harvest if you have plowing or planting queued up
• FarmVille, queues up all actions, so you can do this scenario
  • Queue up fields to harvest
  • Queue up fields to plow that have been harvested
  • Queue up fields to plant that have been plowed

So there you have it in a nutshell.  Two farming games on Facebook.  Each have their own kind of fun.  One is kind of isolated fun without interacting with other farmers and the other encourages networking and cooperation.  My advice is to try them both out.  The worst thing that can happen is the person who invites you to be a neighbor will get some points towards their next farm expansion.

Happy farming!

Who would have thought that a simple Facebook application like Farm Town would encourage Social Networking.

Here are some subtle ways it happens:

• It encourages healthy competition and cooperation between generations
• It encourages neighborly kindness. As you visit a relative’s farm you might notice they need to harvest their fields.  You can send them a message about the status of their farm; like , “Hey, your crops need to be harvested.”
• Sharing pictures of your farm let’s your neighbor’s of all generations see what you’ve been up to.
• Sharing tips about things you’ve learned in Farm Town and how it will help them too.
• Encourages listening – Sometimes, the younger generation has useful things to share with you too.
• Sharing the work load.  If you need help harvesting or plowing, you can hire younger or older generations to help you.  Sometimes, hiring your younger network members to help you harvest or plow is almost like being there working together.  You can always chat while you’re getting things done together.
• It provides common ground for everybody in your network.  You have more things in common and more things to talk about.
• The biggest thing is it encourages communication between all ages from youngster to older members of your network.

If you’ve been receiving all these gifts and invitations from Farm Town, you should consider giving it a shot.  Especially if you have received the invitation from a relative from another generation.  It will give you a chance to strengthen ties with common experiences.  Even if they are virtual.  You never now how much of an impact you can have on each other in the future.

Happy farming.  Spend time having fun and building Social Networks with other generations.

I recently wrote a blog “Social Networking – Facebook connects past and present”

The questions that immediately come to mind:

• How do I reconnect with my past?
• Where do I begin?

This will take some investigative work on your part of course.

First, you need to list your friends’ names.

“Where am I going to find these names?,” you ask.

Here are some sources you might find useful:

• School yearbooks
• Graduation Programs
• Old photo albums – these might jog your memory
• Classmates.com – they’re trying to sell a service, but you will see the names of people in your class (Elementary School, Middle School, High School, College)
• Search for your school using Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Bing (Remember to include City and State if necessary)
• Business Cards – many times people you know will give you their business card to remember them.  Some of us have a folder or Rolodex full of them.
• Phone lists – If you’ve worked for large companies before, you sometimes get a phone list of important contacts
• email archives – sometimes, you might find other contacts who were copied on the email.  This is a great source of contacts
• LinkedIn.com – a business oriented social network, as you create your profile, it helps you get in touch with other people from organizations you’ve worked for

If you’re lucky you’ll find an announcement of a reunion or an alumni association.

If you do find a current email to a past connection, you can always invite them to join your network on Facebook or LinkedIn.  Once you start making network connections with a few people from the past, others who know you and them will start connecting with you too.

If you don’t find anything, you can always start an Alumni association for your school.

While researching this article, I was able to find alumni from each of the schools I’ve attended; from Elementary through College.

Good luck on your efforts to reconnect your past and present social networks.

When first asked to join Facebook many people don’t think of the benefits of Social Networking.  I think they hear what other people say and are hesitant because they’re afraid of the unknown.  How much control will I have? Will it take too much time?  What about all those causes?  What about all those surveys?  What about those other applications like Farm Town? I heard you can get addicted to that game.

The Truth

Facebook will take as much time as you give it.  If you want to give it a lot of time, it’ll consume it.  If you’re more disciplined, you can get away with a surgical strike; login, check messages, post replies, logout.

You have the freedom to choose what you will or will not participate in.  If you don’t want to read about every time your friends level up or get a high score of the week, you can always block that game.  If you don’t want any more invitations to a particular game or survey or whatever, you can always choose to block it.

If one of your friends is a little too verbose, you can always hide them.  They can still communicate with you directly, if they choose to send you a message, but you won’t be subjected to hourly announcements about what they’re doing now.

The Benefits

So what are some of the benefits of Social Networking and Facebook specifically?

• Keeping your networks alive over the distance
  • Even though you don’t live in the same town you can still be virtually connected
  • This is really important when family is spread out all over the continent or for some folks world-wide
• Reuniting with friends, family and colleagues you may have lost touch with
  • This is probably the biggest benefit, there have been many people in my life that I have reconnected with not only through Facebook but with other Social Networks like LinkedIn.
• Developing a sense of Community
  • The more time you spend together the better you get to know them
  • If needs arise, everybody will hear about it and hopefully be able to help or provide support
• Having Fun with friends & family
  • A great way to spend time with friends and family no matter where they are or what time zone.
• It helps people increase synergy
  • You can bring together people from different networks for a common cause and increase the potential power of your network
• It connects your past to the present
  • You can connect networks of your past with your present networks.

This was just a short list of the benefits of Social Networking.  If you have other suggestions, please feel free to add your comments.