Wordscraper Is The Triumphant Return Of Scrabulous To Facebook

Facebook buckled to legal pressure networking

That's 'chutzpah' on a triple word.

How long it takes Hasbro to find out about the new application and whether or not they'll do anything remains to be seen.

At first blush the application looks strikingly similar. There's a board with round spaces instead of square ones, the board is bigger, scoring options are different. The customizable aspects of the board look interesting and could change the game. But at its core, Wordscraper is the second coming of Scrabulous on Facebook.

Whether or not Wordscraper catches on like its forefather, Scrabulous, remains to be seen. But at least wordsmiths and logophiles who spent the day yesterday mourning the loss of the application like a dear friend have something to fill the void.

Last week Hasbro filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York courtroom claiming the application infringed on its intellectual property. The toy manufacturer followed up their legal action against the Agarwalla brother's by requesting that Facebook remove the application from its North American version of the social networking site.

Earlier this week, Facebook complied and users were greeted with this message from the social network: "Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here."

Facebook issued a statement later in the day confirming that the application was removed due to legal action taken by Hasbro. "In response to a legal request from Hasbro, the copyright and trademark holder for Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada, the developers of Scrabulous have suspended their application in the U.S. and Canada until further notice."

Hasbro, which owns the right to Scrabble in North America, has launched its own application in an attempt to capitalize on the approximately 500,000 daily Scrabulous users. Currently, EA's Scrabble Beta, which is just ending its first week of existence, claims about 15,000 daily users.