Facebook pulled the plug on all US and Canadian users once Hasbro, owners of the Scrabble brand, threatened a lawsuit. From a legal perspective, I appreciate Hasbro's position. Scrabble is their brand, and the Scrabulous knock-off constituted copyright infringement. Fine.

What's ironic is, in their effort to protect the Scrabble brand, they've actually done more damage than Scrabulous ever did. It reminds me of the ancient Hippocratic oath—“First do no harm”—which cautions doctors against damaging the patient in the course of trying to save him. To extend the medical metaphor, it’s as if the brand amputated a whole limb—the unsanctioned game—rather than trying to treat the problem, say by inviting the Scrabulous players to move from the old game to a new, duly sanctioned one.

Axiom 2: Don’t alienate your passionates

Scrabulous players comprised a singular asset for the Scrabble brand and for Hasbro—that is, a community of passionates ready to embrace and endorse all things Scrabble. The greatest “no no” of all is that Hasbro managed to make them very angry.

How did they do this? By failing to communicate—and by assuming that the old one-way, command-center brand mentality still cuts it in an age where consumers (and precisely the kinds of consumers who play Scrabulous on Facebook) want to feel special, appreciated and rewarded.

There was the cold turkey factor: a few weeks ago, we Scrabulous players logged onto Facebook, only to see that our beloved game had disappeared. Not to worry, Hasbro reassured us, their own "legitimate" Facebook application would be up by mid-August. To our pleasant surprise, it arrived early–only it was a disaster. The game loaded at dial-up pace, moves frequently weren't recorded, the interface was entirely counter-intuitive. It was a bad experience—and a brand manager's nightmare.

Then last week, with no warning at all, Hasbro removed their "Scrabble Beta" application, deleting everyone's in-progress games in the process. "They're deleting our games again?!" we cried. The only consolation was Hasbro's reassurance that they were fixing the bugs in their program.

Two days later–without comment—Scrabble Beta was back up and running. Nobody at Hasbro bothered to tell the community, so you only knew if you took the time to check up on them. Putting the onus on your users—versus taking the time yourself—belies the level of respect that is due to them as your natural brand passionates.

Axiom 3: Never, ever break your promise

When Scrabble put their own game back up, they added insult to injury: not only were the bugs not fixed, the program was even more error-prone than before. Now I’d hazard that Hasbro would never stock shelves with an incomplete board game—say, a version of Scrabble missing all the “L” tiles.

So they should also know that not delivering on your promise is worse than no promise at all. If the promise was to fix their version of Scrabulous, then by all means do so rather than put something faulty up. And worse, further eroding customers' confidence by deleting our games without warning when they removed the program to "fix" it.

So what might Hasbro do now? After one questionable move and three broken promises in the last three weeks alone--not exactly a triple word score—they certainly have their work cut out for them.

But my recommendation—both as a brand strategist and as a fan of the game—would be to step back and “go big” with an experience that acknowledges to the Scrabulous community that they matter and that the brand knows they messed up. Potentially they could turn the fact that they’re still learning how to bring fans together online into something they invite their community of passionates to help them solve together. Plenty of great brands have invited their communities to share their ideas—Hasbro might even consider doing so face to face. At the very least, it would be a great gesture to fans like me who’ve lost a lot of faith in a brand they used to love.

Adam Gerston is an Account Manager for Jack Morton Worldwide. He lives and works in San Francisco.