I have also played Fishville, the fast growing sister product… a straight rip, and equally addictive.

The Facebook platform seemed not an issue, until I realised that because I am no longer a very active Facebook user, I had missed the fact that Farmville requests were lying stagnant in my notifications folder… and the game itself had not drawn my attention to them, i.e.: I had to become more active on Facebook itself to play the game effectively.

Interestingly, this fad has drawn my pre-teen son and many of his friends from Puzzle Pirates and miniclip to Facebook, where they do not network in the more traditional sense, but only communicate via Zynga games – as message posts literally on each other’s farms.

Much more concerning however, is how much time our CFO spends playing Farmville. Whose managing the money?