Monopoly have been and may forever be, on this writer’s eyes, a terrible and infuriating game meant only to rip families and friendships apart. Setting aside the traumatic childhood experiences that involve board flipping and shouting matches with siblings and folk once often known as close friends, Monopoly also is problematic from a more thoughtful perspective. What could be said a few game that encourages cut-throat, red-blooded capitalism in this sort of blatant manner to such young, impressionable minds as those of youngsters and faculty students when the WiFi isn’t working?

Still, despite these concerns, Monopoly is a really popular game; it has over 11 million likes on Facebook, in fact, and people numbers just don’t lie. And Monopoly is, to its credit, a flexible game; it is available in numerous editions that encapsulate any variety of themes, starting from Disney films to zombies. The sport has a brand new incarnation for each generation and market, making it a form of cultural icon in America, notwithstanding how infuriating it could be, very similar to tabloid magazines and commercialism.

Speaking of commercialism, it has once more made its way in cahoots with Monopoly, in a wonderfully blatant way. For the board game’s newest installation, Monopoly Empire, Hasbro decided to host a Facebook tournament that it labeled “Battle of The Brands,” where wherein various brands battled on Facebook to look who could gain 5,000 likes the fastest on individual Facebook pages arrange for the development. While there has been no grand prize for the person companies for winning, fans of the winning group’s page received a $5.00 coupon off of a purchase order of the board game.

Over the process two hours, various pages received drastically different outcomes; the page for Carnival Cruises soared past the 5,000 mark very quickly, quickly securing its place because the champion. Chevrolet and Beats by Dre made it to about 2,000 likes at some stage in the 2 hours, while Yahoo and Nestle, despite their best efforts, only secured about 200 likes throughout the period of time. Other pages, like EA and eBay, appeared to ignore the contest entirely; they didn’t post any messages to rally support in the course of the two hours.

As David Griner puts it,”While it can not be a real test of name potency, today’s challenge sure is a telling reminder that there’s an important difference between having lots of fans and knowing how one can put them to exploit.”

[Image courtesy of the Monopoly Facebook announcement.]