Facebook Monopoly: The Board Game

Facebook: The Board Game

facebook - boardgame profile

The Problem: The Internet has become the ultimate time-suck where sites like Facebook, designed to make us more social, are actually making us more anti-social. That’s right, research studies at Stanford have shown that social networking sites like Facebook can increase loneliness, depression, and insecurity!

Our web usage is starting to affect our ability to successfully communicate in real life. Because of this, Patrick C. Klein is looking to “create an experience to persuade people to stop using the internet forever.” To attempt this not-so-simple task, Klein has cleverly taken two of the most basic needs of modern human kind and combined them into one: Facebook and Monopoly.

Facebook: The Board Game

The idea is simple. Instead of wasting away on Facebook, you can meet up with some actual friends in real life, have some fun, and play the Facebook Board Game live together. And instead of reading each other’s usually lame status updates online, when you land on “Status,” you’ll choose an inspirational instruction card that prompts you to share something interesting about yourself, such as “telling people about something exiting you have planned for the next week.” When friends share things you like during the game, you can hand them “like” cards to show your appreciation.  It’s just like Facebook – but maybe even better?

Facebook: The Board Game

break up

tag a player

status

Are you looking for a little more real-life engagement than what can be found online? Like actually seeing your friends again one day,in person? Then Facebook the Game just might be for you!

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

13 comments

    1. Ryan Hill Oh just you wait til I get round to my 3rd book, she says, still finishing the 1st – which does have quite a bit about this in it…

    2. I commented, but ironically (because the post is about the lack of interaction in online relationships) all the comments seem to have disappeared this morning.

  1. 2 problems –

    1) Monopoly is really boring – is this really your idea of spending quality time with your friends?

    2) You have posted this online – thus demonstrating that being online does have some advantages in terms of contacting people.

    Seriously, you are comparing apples with oranges here. If you don’t get social networking, or it isn’t for you, fine. But I don’t understand why people have to make it a moral choice between ‘real’ and ‘online’. Was there the same sort of fuss about the telephone when it became popular, I wonder?

    1. “when you land on ‘Status,’ you’ll choose an inspirational instruction card that prompts you to share something interesting about yourself, such as “telling people about something exciting you have planned for the next week.” Reminds me of one of those dreadful “getting to know each other” exercises that they make you play in Christian youth groups…

    2. The answer to your last question is “yes” – and that there was similar dystopian whining about the invention of the automobile. Both technologies were certain to destroy community. Today, community has certainly changed, but that was going to happen anyway, and for many people the car and the telephone are key to the new way that “normal” community works. (Not many people walk to church, to school, to work, to see their parents…)

  2. I haven’t had one yet. I have never been an advocate for long-distance relationships myself. To each their own though. If it makes you happy and you are both consenting adults then why not?

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