Facebook Introduces Streamlined Option For In-Game Friend Requests

Facebook has introduced a new option to its friend request interface allowing game players to quickly fill out their maximum daily requests with a single click. As noticed by InsideSocialGames, games such as Ravenskye City now include an option to "Select Top 50 Friends" at the top of the neighbor invite menu. Clicking this option immediately fills out the invite request with 50 Facebook friends from the top of an alphabetically-sorted list. The new option automatically shrinks in size as a player manually chooses friends from the list, letting that player fill out the remainder of an invite to reach the daily maximum of 50 people with a single click. The new option also works within existing Facebook invite filters, such as those that limit results to friends from other games. While the new option has the potential to increase the virality of social games by making it easier for players to share invites quickly, choosing friends from the top of an alphabetical list seems unlikely to create well-targeted invites that go only to friends likely to be interested in games. In an August interview with Gamasutra, Facebook platform team head Carl Sjogreen promised coming changes such as user recommendations and game rankings that would 're-open virality' that was limited when Facebook took steps to stop notification spam early last year.