The Scrabble for supremacy

If you'd have mentioned 'Scrabulous' to someone last year you'd have probably forgiven them for thinking you were talking about some kind of nefarious skin complaint rather than the Facebook-based unauthorized version of the traditional boardgame, Scrabble.

With more than 600,000 players using the Scrabulous application daily, game company Mattel has launched an official Scrabble application to rival the unauthorised version. Unfortunately for Mattel, early signs are that people are sticking with what they know with the official version only attracting 2000 daily views.

Have Mattel missed the boat or can they tempt users over to the official version? More importantly, should they be trying to best their rival or instead take advantage somehow of the renewed interest it seems to have generated in their product?