In the month of March, Farmville added a new feature to help neighbors stay in contact with one another: a comment box. Before the comment box arrived the only way you could use your farm to communicate with other members was to post a sign post. Sign posts are still available, but farm communication has moved out of the dark ages and into the twenty-first century.

Your comment box is located on the upper right corner of your Farmville screen. When you click on it you will see two tabs. One is for comments and one is for visits. Your comments tab will display any messages you have posted and any that have been posted for you. The visits tab tells you which neighbors have completed various tasks on your farm.

To post a message, type your note into the box above the comments and visits tab. This box will allow you to either post the message to your comment box or as a sign post on your farm. When you visit a neighbor’s farm you can post a comment to their comment box, a sign post or you can even check a box to have your comment appear on their Facebook Profile.

There are several benefits to this new feature. You can easily know who has been to your farm to fertilize or feed your chickens, or who has sent you a gift. You may already know who sent you a gift by your gift acceptance page, but it is easy to forget once you click that gift and accept it. When you arrive on your farm, you may even see who visited in the form of a pop-up telling you Sara fed your chickens. If, however, you have had several visitors in your absence, it may only state that Sara and five others have fed your chickens. Seeing it in detail in your comment box will allow you to return the favor. This helps you to be the kind of neighbor a good Farmville player desires.

The comment box is a fun way to communicate with your closest neighbors. You can comment on an interesting design, leave them a message regarding a co-op mission, ask for specific gifts, or request help fertilizing your farm. Since the comment box also gives you the option to post a message to a friend’s profile, you can discuss real life matters as well. By being able to post your comment directly to a friend’s page, you can save time.

If your personal life gets busy and your farm life takes a back burner, you can use your comment box to catch up on what has happened while you were gone. You can also use it to ensure that you reward those neighbors who have been good to you. If you have upwards of twenty five neighbors, the task of visiting them all daily to fertilize their crops and feed their chickens can feel a bit overwhelming. Knowing who has helped you, can be an enticement to focus on those neighbors until you have more time to make the full rounds. On the other hand if you are able to visit all of your neighbors often, your visit notation in their comment box can remind them to fertilize your crops or send you a thank you gift. Your comment box, used to its fullest potential, is guaranteed to enhance your game play.