Part One: The History
June 3, 2010
Farmer Astrid Schenk becomes frustrated with the inability of her neighbors to collect the foals she's been breeding for them. Many go in mere seconds, thanks in part to the popularity of a relatively new gizmo from Gamers Unite called the Snag Bar. Although this tool has only been out for a few months, it has proven to be very effective - too effective. She decides that it's time to share in an environment where she can be assured that whoever collects her foals are actually collecting them because they're playing the game and not asleep while some gadget just grabs everything it can.
Going to Facebook, she creates a group: Sharing Foals and Calfs.[sic]
The group is based on a simple premise: friends can share foals and calves with each other in a semi-private environment, they don't have to scour the Facebook feed to find what they want (most of it is gone at this point anyway, thanks to the snaggers), and they can socialize and interact with each other a little more. Finally people will have a better chance of getting that rare foal or calf for their farm that they've always wanted!
She invites all of her friends to join, including Farmer Brown.
June 4, 2010
Farmer John Brown notices that he's been invited to a new Facebook Group: Sharing Foals and Calfs. He notices that it's run by Astrid, and he knows her to be an awesome Farmer. He takes a look around, finds it interesting but John really isn't all that keen on foals or calves anyway. He posts to congratulate Astrid on the new group, and is immediately yelled at by some other members for posting "chit-chat" on the wall.
June 5, 2010
John sees that he and Sami Baker have been added as Admins to this new group. He's not thrilled with this - his farm, blog, and fan page keeps him plenty busy. Unable to figure out how to take himself off the admin list, he leaves the group.
John is promptly yelled at by Sami, and told to re-join the group and post some foals. He re-joins the group, Astrid makes him an Admin once again, and because he left the group, he's now third on the Admin list, behind Sami and Astrid.
The group proves to be very popular, and John uses Facebook to invite all of his 3,000 friends. Facebook locks up before he can hit 'send' and his account is locked out for 12 hours.
June 6, 2010
Realizing that English is not Astrid's native tongue, John gently renames the group to "Sharing Foals and Calves" with her blessing. He adds several folks to the admin team, including longtime personal friend and advisor, Moyshe Ding, and master breeders Lightning Springer and Lisa Etinger.
June 7, 2010
John creates the FarmVille Co-Op Collective, a private group where members can join closed Co-Ops without having to worry about people hopping on without helping out.
June 13, 2010
The ongoing "GU Wars" heat up in FarmVille. Snaggers Vs NonSnaggers! SFC decides to reach out to both sides of the issue, announcing that "We don't care if you're GU or not. Leave the drama at the door and come get some foals!".
He posts in GU about the new group. Net gain, about 30 members.
June 21, 2010
John enlists the help of Master Farmer and friend, Lisa Etinger, to help out with the admin duties of the group.
Lisa promptly makes her own marketing post in GU, and the world explodes. Net gain, about 2,000 members over a 4 day period. John learns that Marketing is definitely not his strong point, and concentrates on keeping the group running smoothly and organized.
Seeing a need for better organization and communication with the Admins and Breeders, John creates two groups: Sharing Foals and Calves Admin Roundtable, and Sharing Foals and Calves - Breeders.
These two private groups would later prove to be the glue that holds the groups together through explosive growth, and where lasting friendships and bonds were formed that will endure long after FarmVille is gone.
June 28, 2010
SFC is delivered a devastating blow. Admin, advisor and Master Breeder Lisa Etinger decides to stop playing FarmVille. Normally, this would have crushed most groups, but the way Lisa left us only served to inspire the entire organization, and that story has graced our pages ever since.
July 1, 2010
Sharing Foals and Calves has just added its 3,000th member. Membership is closed while the management team regroups and decides how to manage the explosive growth.
July 25, 2010
With the popularity of the Crafting Cottages, John creates "Sharing Bushels and Seeds", where folks could seek out and share needed bushels to complete goods. The concept really helped some folks who needed it, but it never really takes off. Later, this group would be repurposed.
July 30, 2010
While preparing an enraged rant post for this blog on the topic of all the pop-ups farmers were dealing with when harvesting crops, John goes into cardiac arrest while at the keyboard. He misses 4 days on his farm and is mighty upset about that.
The outpouring of well wishes and concern from the FarmVille Community is staggering. Upon arriving home and first checking his farm, John finishes editing the offending blog post, which is never published.
Membership in the group continues to skyrocket.
August, 21, 2010
Membership hits the 4,000 member mark. Later the group would reach an all-time high of 5,155 members before a massive clean-up effort to remove people who were not actively participating or who had left the game.
August 27, 2010
SFC creates Farmers Unlimited, a free-posting group where people could post consumables, bonuses and other items not permitted in Sharing Foals and Calves. The group enjoys a smaller but loyal following.
September 30, 2010
A single phone call would forever change the landscape of SFC: John learns that Moyshe Ding has been diagnosed with cancer, and the prognosis is terminal.
Ding pursues treatment while John founds "Farmer's Foundation", the charitable arm of Sharing Foals and Calves, and to date members have donated thousands of dollars to help Ding's family during this real life crisis.
The generous response has reflected one of SFC's long-stated mantras: "It's not about the game, but the people who play it".
November 2, 2010
A writer for Gannett Co. publishes a review of SFC in Farmer's Daily, where the group is referred to as 'THE Gold Standard in FarmVille Link Sharing'.
March 12, 2011
SFC repurposes "Sharing Bushels and Seeds" into "Sharing Trees and Seedlings". The group is an immediate hit with tree-growers from all over the world.
April 1, 2011
SFC repurposes "Farmer Brown's Gift Exchange" (a private sharing group for young farmers and their parents) into SFC Sheep. The group takes off as the popularity of Sheep Breeding explodes.
April 22, 2011
The SFC News Fan Page is launched to keep SFC members from across all 5 groups informed of global changes to the SFC Organization.
April 25, 2011
Facebook announces that all 'old format' groups will be updated to the 'new format' within the next few months.
The SFC Management Team goes into high gear to decide how to deal with the challenges of using this new format for link sharing. After a Facebook-botched update of SFC Sheep, the team decides to move to a non-Facebook format for future link sharing.
May 9, 2011
Without much fanfare, SFC launches www.SharingFoalsAndCalves.com, a forum-based link sharing environment. Posting activity immediately rivals or exceeds that of the Facebook-based groups.
To this day I miss Lisa. Her posts on GU was what made me join SFC in the first place. Sorry John, I never saw your's ;p If you happen to have any contact with Lisa at all Please let her know we still love her and miss her, even after a year! She's in my prayers and i hope that the situation that made her leave us has improved!!!
ReplyDeleteActually...Lisa's been back since November. :-)
ReplyDelete