What is the best way to increase one's mafia size? How can I do it safely & where do I find people to add?

Submitted by Junior Soprano on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 18:20

Related Terms :

As discussed in my FAQ about reasons to get a larger mafia, you're going to want to get lots and lots of people in your Mafia! But how?

You must be Facebook friends with someone before they can join your mafia. I suspect it's a Facebook limitation, not a Mafia Wars/Zynga limitation. You don't have to be real-life friends with them... you could be mortal enemies just so long as you're willing to accept the Facebook friend request!
I have tried various ways that supposedly let you add people without being friends. They don't work. Don't waste your time.
When you join their mafia, they join yours. If they join your mafia, you join theirs. Only one person has to join and it is automatically reciprocated for the other. (Yay for my vocabulary!)
You can delete people once they're in your mafia. They'll still be in your mafia, you just can't help them with jobs. You can still trade with them & put them in your Top Mafia.

With that out of the way, let's get started!

First, you need to take some precautions and take care of your Facebook privacy settings. You don't want bunches of strangers to have access to your personal information, and there may be other things you don't want them to see like your photos, cell phone number, or what have you.

Privacy Settings

Click any of the links below to see a screenshot and caption to help you manage your privacy settings. You can view them as a slideshow by clicking the play button or using your arrow keys to flip between screenshots.

Read the captions underneath the images for explanations of what to do!

Use these techniques to set Privacy settings anywhere that privacy settings are available on Facebook -- even individual applications can have custom privacy settings. You can also use the Privacy settings page to view how a certain person sees your profile page. If you are concerned that something private is being displayed when you don't want it to be, you can always check for yourself to see if someone in the Mafia Wars group can see it or not.

Now to get some people!

Getting mafia members -- starting with the smartest methods, on down to the most terrible.

I've done almost all of these, save getting banned from Facebook. Maybe my own road of personal growth will help you avoid some frustrating, awkward and unintentionally annoying situations! :)

Brilliant

- Utilizing an active mass invite email list, found on a good forum, discussion board or group. (Also known as an add-train or email list, etc.)
- Joining a clan or group who has an active bunch of players who will add you (especially if they have a mass-email invite list!)
- Using Bobby Heartrate's 'Add All' bookmarklet to automatically attempt to add everyone in your friends list (but not currently in your mafia) to your mafia family.
- Using Bobby Heartrate's 'Add to Mafia' bookmarklet to add yourself to people's mafia without having to rely on them to post a status message or send/accept invites.
- Using Bobby Heartrate's 'Confirm All' bookmarklet to mass-accept the bunches of friend requests that you'll be getting constantly.
- Placing your Join My Mafia link on your Profile page so people can find it regardless of your status message.

Decent

- Posting in dedicated "add me" threads.

- Adding people from "add me" threads until you can until you get a pink warning box from Facebook that you're engaging in spam-ish behavior.
- Setting your status message to your Join My Mafia link so people don't need to send/accept an invite.

Amateur

- Send a Mafia Wars invite and wait for the other person to accept it.
- Wait for someone to send you an invite when you've run out.
- Not putting your status invite link on your Profile page where anyone can find it regardless of your status.
- Forgetting to set your status when you've posted an 'add me' stating that your status is set.
- Sending people private messages with your status link when they don't have a status message set, still haven't accepted your invite and/or haven't sent you an invite when you've run out of invites.

Most Terrible

- Posting an 'add me' stating you're accepting friend requests, then not actually sticking around to accept invites.
- After receiving pink warning box, beg people to add you when they post their own "add me"s.
- Post "add me" threads all over the place inappropriately, in the wrong forums, in the middle of people's discussions, on a thread about trading, making new threads instead of using an official Add Me thread, etc.
- Post your status link on someone's wall.
- Ask on someone's wall for them to invite you.
- Sending someone an invite when their status message is set.
- Have your privacy settings so high that people can't see your profile to even send you a friend request.
- Post http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home as the link to your Facebook profile, when it is in fact that is the generic link to everyone's own Facebook homepage.
- Get yourself banned from Facebook for ignoring the pink warning box and continuing to send Facebook invites.

Resources for getting mafia members

How to use Add Trains:

Facebook has a way to invite people via email address. This will allow you to get around the manual process of sending friend requests AND eliminate the possibility o the pink warning box when you add too many people too quickly.

1) Go find an active email add list.
2) Go to the last page of the thread and find the very last, latest post.
3) Copy-paste all the email addresses into a new post.
4) Add a comma and then your email address at the very end of the list. *** See important privacy note below!
5) Wait for invites to roll in.

Optional (very effective, but some privacy concerns so not for everyone):
6) Go to the Friends menu and choose 'Invite Friends'
7) Paste the list of email addresses into the To: field on the Invite Friends page.
8) Make sure you put a message specifying the invite is for Mafia Wars.
9) Click Invite. This will send Facebook friend requests to everyone on the list.

The only caveat is that you can't specify a friend group, so as people accept your friend requests, be sure to add them to your Mafia Wars group!! They will be able to see whatever is on your profile that your normal Friends have access to until you change their group to Mafia Wars, so if you don't want them to have a chance to see your profile at all, you might want to just wait for the add train to get people inviting you instead.

You will be getting invites for a very long time if you've joined a particularly popular add train or one that doesn't get retired periodically. You might get tired of constantly getting invites after a while!

*** Important privacy note! I recommend, to keep your email address private and/or if want to be able to hop off the add train, to set up a new email address just for the add train. Facebook lets you set additional email addresses for your profile. By creating a throwaway email address at Gmail or something and listing it on the add train list, you can delete it from your Facebook profile when you're tired of getting invites. More importantly, it keeps your real everyday email address from possibly getting spammed or compromised or something.

To add a new email address to your Facebook account, go to Account Settings -> Email -> Change and then enter your new email address (it has to be a real, valid email address.)

Places to find and join add trains:

- Mafia Wars Mega Add Train (look in the Discussion Board, lots of big & active lists)
- Mafia Wars Mass Email List (look in the Discussion Board, lots of big & active lists)
- Mass Email List
- Search for Mafia Wars Email on Facebook and you'll see lots of similar groups
- Many clans/groups have their own mass email lists going

How to post your 'Add Me' the right way

- Point at the Profile button on your Facebook page and right-click.

- Choose Copy Link Location.

- Find an appropriate place to post your add-me.

~ If it states that you're not supposed to put add-me's on the Wall, then don't.
~ Also don't create a new discussion topic -- there is almost ALWAYS one or several specified add-me threads on every forum, discussion group, page, etc.
~ Make sure you're posting in the correct place, especially on the official Mafia Wars Zynga board, since there are people posting add-me for non-Facebook sites like MySpace.

- Politely ask that people add you, and paste your profile link. It should resemble something like this http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=594878913 (the numbers will be different -- they are your Facebook ID) It should not be http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home, that is everyone's Facebook home page, and they will think you are a buffoon for posting it. :(

- Submit it once and then leave it. Don't submit another request for a while. If it gets bumped off the page quickly, give it 20 minutes or so before posting again. Some places, like the official forum, will only let you request once a week. Don't spam your add me or you'll just annoy folks into ignoring your request.

Now that you've got people rolling in, it is time to get them added to your mafia efficiently!

Make Joining Your Mafia Easier for Everyone

Once you start getting friends for Mafia Wars, you need to get them into your mafia! They don't do you much good just sitting in your friends list.

Mafia Add Techniques, in reverse order of ninja-ness!

- Use Bobby Heartrate's 'Add All' bookmarklet. This will go through all your friends who aren't already in your mafia and add them automagically. <3 <3 <3
- After accepting a friend request, click their name to view their profile. Now click on Bobby Heartrate's 'Add to Mafia' bookmarklet to add yourself to their mafia. <3 <3
- Paste your status invite link on your Profile page so people can click it and add themselves to your mafia. (Click for slideshow example)
- Set your status message to contain your Mafia Wars status invite link.
- Send an invite from the Recruit page under My Mafia (maximum of 16 invites a day.)
- Wait for someone to invite you.

Hopefully all this information will help you get a large mafia quickly. Mine has exploded since picking up on the mass email add phenomenon. It is a lot easier than manually requesting dozens of people, and dodging the dreaded pink warning box.

Be safe and happy and I hope this will help you get to 501 and then some! :)