Friends For Sale

I have been using Facebook for a few months now and wasn't really a fan initially for the interface was much more complicated than Orkut which is simple and allows one to easily initiate conversations with friends through scraps and suchlike. But what got me addicted to Facebook were some of the applications. Not only are they innovative but highly addictive and provide hours of entertainment. One of my consistent favorites and one that I discovered just about a month ago is Friends For Sale.

The concept behind Friends For Sale is simplistic. You buy friends or strangers ( who have installed the application ) as pets and when they get sold you make a percentage of the sell price as profit over and above the original price paid back to you. You can choose to buy back or let go once the price seems unreasonable and choose to look for 'pets' that are reasonable and whose price you think would appreciate once they are 'discovered' by other traders. Also when you are bought as a pet your price appreciates by 10% of your previous value and you make a percentage of the profit in FFS dollars. Now this might seem like a passing fad and something one would get bored of in a day but that is not so. I haven't tired of it and I have a very short attention span. I gave it a bit of thought to see what could be the reason as to the addictiveness of this game.The reason I think is the extreme social nature of this application allowing users to freely interact with one another and forming groups, tackling the application and one's success in the game with strategy and team work. You go about checking out other people's pet 'collections' and maybe buy one or two if you like any and leave a comment on their profile thus initiating a conversation with a complete stranger from a different part of the world and an acquaintanceship being born when he or she replies back.

I have been fortunate to be part of a group of guys called FFSGG ( Friends For Sale - Guys Group ) who play this game and are as or maybe more passionate than me. They are great players, great people and great friends. Here's to all the guys at FFSGG. You Rock!