MyMiniCity: Useless, Spammy, and No, It’s Not Mahalo

If you've ever wondered how to scramble to a high page rank with lots of eyeballs in very little time? MyMiniCity has the process down pat, with a current Google Page Rank of 5 and climbing, along with a huge spike in page views according to Compete.

Aside from advertising other games for its creators, Motion Twin, MyMiniCity doesn't seem to have much of a point. The creators claim 7 million accounts in the French-speaking world, with only 10 developers working on the portal with over 40 casual minigames as well as other games. Known as Miniville en français, MyMiniCity is a much simpler version of the popular EA game Sim City. Your city (in my case, the not-very-thriving metropolis of Cyndyville) is built by the number of visitors you can lure to your site. I suppose it's less annoying than getting Rick rolled, but the reality is that you are still left only to spamming and cajoling to get visitors to your city. The more eyeballs you lure there, the more your city grows, allowing you access to additional services and development features for your little city.

MyMiniCity requires no information to sign up; just the name and desired country for your personalized village. However, as Google Blogoscoped commenter Justin notes, the site does nothing but encourage users to spam their links everywhere in the hope of growing their desolate house in the forest into a city filled with skyscrapers like the higher-ranked cities. Many of the “city news” sections of the higher-ranked cities promise to return visits to anyone who visits their cities, so it ends up being an endless circle of users clicking on each others' cities to keep them going. I can't imagine it staying interesting for very long, even if you are able to develop your city, because keeping the visits coming is a requirement of keeping factories open and populations from dying. The site also doesn't check for profanity or racial epithets in the city naming (at least for English language), and human nature being what it is, you'll find several city names not safe for work, children, or anyone with half a brain.