Social Networking “app” Games: How to get friends

So, I know many people run into this problem. You’re on a social networking site like facebook or myspace and you find this cool game to play. Then you frind out that in order to be successful in the game you need 500 friends….wtf!
So, you anoy your real life friends trying to get them to play this game. Maybe you even succeed in getting a couple. But even so it’s frustrating, how the heck are you supposed to get that many friends anyway?

Well, the solution is actually quite a bit simpler then it seems. However, before you implement this I recommend primarily playing the game though a different account. I made the mistake of implementing this on my primary account one time and found myself bombarded with invites and updates from people I could honestly care less about. After all, I don’t even interact with these people, I just invited them so that I would do better in a game I was  playing. Once you’ve decided which account you’re going to play on and have installed the relevant app. Do a search for the app using the site’s search tool.

So for example type in “pet society” or “mobsters” or “vampire” or whatever it happens to be called. This will bring up not only the app page its self but a number of groups devoted to that game. What you want to do then is go to the app page or the biggest group listed and join it. Once you’ve joined there will be a massive post somewher that consists of a bunch of people who have posted

“add me please”

or something to that effect. Go to the last page (or where ever the most recent posts appear) and make a similar post of your own. Then work your way backwards inviting all these people. For the subject line in the invite just put the name of the game you’re inviting them for. This will ensure that they immediately accept rather then trying to figure out where they know you from. Continue doing this until you either run out of names or get tired. The later is far more  likely to happen then the former. I’ve found that this proactive approach (sending invites) works far better then simply passively putting your name on the list and waiting for the invites to roll in. You will get maybe 10 or so invites from putting your name on the list. but you can easily get several hundred in one day by sending them out.

If you decide you’re done for the day but want to come back the next, just make a note of where you were in the list and resume from there. Unless you wait a month or so before resuming there won’t be very many names posted beneath your own and it may be difficult to figure out where you were before otherwise. I would not recommend starting at the top or with the oldest posts. these people have been on the list so long that they probably reject additional requests simply because they are sick of getting them. The newest names however will be people like yourself who are still trying to build there numbers.

What not to do

Now, once you get as many friends as you want for the first game. You might think, “hey, I can invite these people to join game Z”. Sending invities to these people will get you probably a dozen or so answers but for the most part you will simply anoy the people already on your list. If you contniousloy bombard people with invites you may find yourself getting uninvited. Instead I recommend sending out requests for other games no more then once a month. Then get the remaining numbers you desire by finding another forum and following a similar process.

I know this may seem annoying but in the end it will be alot less frustrating to the people you invite and alot more effective for yourself. Certainly there will be some overlap, but probably not enough that you’ll be able to stick with just the original invites.

Something else you will want to avoid is making it hard for other people to add you. Make sure you don’t have your security settings set to requesting the user answer a question about you or replicate a capita type security question. These will only reduce how many people will bother sending you an invite. Whenever I encounter something like this I just move along to the next person since I’m not going to waste my time jumping though hoops for someone I’m never going to talk to.

Now, get out there and claim to be friends with 500 people you’ve never met and never talk to