New Facebook Groups format to replace all existing groups

In an Official blog post from Facebook earlier this week, Facebook announced that all existing groups under the 'old' format (such as Sharing Foals and Calves) will soon be 'upgraded' to the new group format. If you belong to ANY Facebook Groups, you need to read this.

The new group format features several distinct changes from the way the 'old' groups operate.  

Zynga Pulls The Plug

So...unless you've been living under a rock for the last few hours, Zynga recently announced that certain sheep/pig patterns and attributes, originally released by "hackers" (pause for dramatic effect and/or snickering), would be discontinued until Zynga decides to release those patterns and attributes in the normal course of gameplay.

The hue and cry from across the land has already taken place.  Fan sites and the usual FarmVille pundits have already taken their position on this decision by Zynga.  Causes have been created and are circulating more widely than ever before.

Facebook Security Glitch in Groups

It's not REALLY a secret, but we got your attention, huh?
This is important stuff to understand, folks!

There's been some sort of change in the way Facebook posts group activity to your own wall, and it impacts the group security of our FarmVille Link-Sharing Groups.

In a nutshell, this glitch allows you to view the wall of a group member on your friends list, and view their postings to that group, including comments and links posted, even if you may not be a group member.  Previously you could see these posts, but could not click-through to the original group posting.

The Curse of the Wishlist

We've all had it happen: You make a wish for something in FarmVille, and you go to collect the gifts your friends have sent you, only to get the 'Gift not found' error. It happens consistently when you use the wishlist (above) to make a request for badly needed parts.

Did you know that posts such as this one are also 'wishlist' posts?  Same mechanism that drives the regular wishlist also drives posts asking for bottles to feed your lamb.

How do you avoid disappointing your friends when sending an item from the wishlist?  While this doesn't work 100% of the time, your chances for a successful gift send increase exponentially when you let your farm load, completely, after sending the gift.


That's 100%.  Not halfway.  Not 'almost'.  100%.

If you click out of it before your farm loads all the way, odds are the recipient will NOT get what you wanted them to have...and subsequently they probably won't send one back.

Posting a shortened link using Bit.ly

Seeing links shortened with Bit.ly but not sure how to do that? This tutorial walks you through setting up Bit.ly, step-by-step so that you, too can post links to your wall, email or your favorite link-sharing group.

A lot of farmers are posting links nowadays.  Some use links to post bonuses to groups, and some post links in order to avoid having their bonuses appear in feed aggregators or collected by snagging applications.

Whatever your reason for posting a link, you need to know that Facebook has a limit of 420 characters when posting something as a status - so if you're posting a link, you will probably want to shorten it first.  If you try and post a FarmVille link that's too long, either the link will not post at all, or what does post becomes uncollectable.

There are many link shortening services available.  For several reasons, I prefer using a service called 'Bit.ly'.

This may all SEEM like a lot of work, but it's really just a matter of a few simple steps one time, and then it's set up for you permanently.  You'll be saving yourself hours of work in the long run, and we'll walk you through what you need to do, step by step.