Siqi Chen is Selling Your Friends to the Highest Bidder
IntimateMath.com, February 15, 2010 http://intimatemath.com/?nr=0
Love, happiness, class… rumor has it that plenty of things cannot be bought with money, but Siqi Chen of Serious Business has challenged the critics; now you can buy your friends. Friends for Sale has quickly become one of the most popular apps on Facebook today, with over five million monthly active users buying and selling their friends as “pets” for virtual currency. Siqi’s app encourages users to meet people outside of their networks, build the most attractive collection of pets, and maybe even form a love connection with that extra special pet that he/she is secretly crushing on. Whatever the individual draw, people are crazy about this wildly addictive social game, which has spawned a daily blog devoted solely to sharing game tips for Friends for Sale.
Launched in November 2007 by Serious Business founders Alex Le and Siqi Chen, Friends for Sale now holds the ranks among the top games on the social networking site. Once users join the app, they become eligible for purchase by friends and strangers alike, with the ultimate goal of becoming more expensive, or highly valued. Every time a player is bought, his or her value increases. The trading can get pretty competitive. People and their pets continue to pick up new strategies to build up more cash and buy up more pets, but the central purpose of the game is just to have a good time with friends and perhaps connect with a few new faces in the process. After all, Facebook is all about bringing people together and keeping them in touch, and Siqi offers a fun and entertaining way to keep these interactions exciting with Friends for Sale.
In recent news, the company behind Friends for Sale, Serious Business, was acquired by social gaming powerhouse Zynga. Who knows what is in store for Siqi and his co-workers’ big move to the Zynga San Francisco office and the bright future of Friends for Sale?