An application called FarmVille Gift has been making its way around Facebook over the past day or so. The application makes it appear as though users can send each other free FarmVille Villas — the Villa being the most expensive house in the popular FarmVille Facebook game.
It appears that free FarmVille Villas are not actually the case with the the FarmVille Gift app. I received such a gift request, signed up for FarmVille Gift, and observed the following:
- I received a notification that I had been sent a “farm ville villa” through the FarmVille Gift application.
- I signed up for FarmVille Gift and accepted the gift.
- A Villa was nowhere to be found in FarmVille nor in my list of pending FarmVille gifts.
- Developer Arshad Naveed posted the following message on the app’s page: “ Dear All, there are some error for that this application is not working and i dont think so that i can fix this— best regards, Arshad”
- There were 318 comments on this message, all from users claiming they never received their villa.
- The FarmVille Gift application page is filled with advertisements.
- Within 15 minutes of signing up for this app, I received 5 notifications prompting me to either send more gifts through the app, or sign up for a game called “Champions HQ”.
- The FarmVille Gift app was created by Naveed using Gift Creator which advertises “Make your own gift app in minutes — just add pictures!”
Based on these observations I can only conclude that the FarmVille Gift application does not actually send villas, it never did, and may never have been intended to do so. Users do not receive villas — they receive pictures of villas. The real purpose of the application is likely to drive traffic to the advertisements on the application’s homepage, and earn affiliate revenue through the Champions HQ game it seems to be advertising.
