May 15- Results and new info are in Red. In the lull of good Wii games I have been paying a little more attention to the online features of the Wii. I decided to conduct an experiment where I would visit several different message boards, forums, and websites and try to exchange Wii codes using the methods availble on each site. Then I would gauge the percentage of actual, mutual Wii registrations that I received vs. the number that I requested. Here are the sites that I visited and utilized and the method of Wii code exchange available on each site:
GameSpot Forum
Summary: There is a Wii Code Exchange Thread on this board. The general protocol is to post your own Wii code in the thread and then collect all of the Wii codes from the other people and add them to your Wii list. Then you are to PM (Private Message) each person to let them know that you did so and to give them your own code. I focused on the "newer" posts since I felt that these were more active users desiring Wii friends.
Results: It is tedious yet quite effective. I requested 10 total friends and 7 of those became a Wii friend. 70% return.
MapWii.com
Summary: You can register your Wii and Wii code on this Google Map. Then you can search for other Wiis in your neighorhood or anywhere in the world. Each Wii is displayed as a pin on the map. If you click on the pin and it gives you the option to send the person an e-mail (via computer, not Wii) to exchange Wii codes. The e-mails are sent via the site and not your own personal e-mail. The e-mails are very slick and it even sends you a reminder e-mail. The best feature is that you can print a list of the Wii codes that you have to add.
Results: One of the better methods. But it is impersonal; your new friends are likely complete strangers. I requested 11 total friends and 1 of those became a Wii friend. 10% return.
My.Opera.com:
Summary: Refer to summary above for GameSpot. However, the plus here is that it is more heavily used by DS and Wii users since Opera is the internet engine available for the Wii.
Results: It is tedious yet quite effective. I requested 16 total friends and 9 of those became a Wii friend. 56% return.
2Old2Play.com:
Summary: Refer to summary above for GameSpot. However, as an adult gamer, I find the crowd here to be more supportive.
Results: It is tedious yet quite effective. I requested 61 total friends and 13 of those became a Wii friend. 21% return. Since I was interested in having mainly adult friends I chose this forum for the bulk of my friend requests.
BenMii.com:
Summary: A fully fleshed-out Wii Code Database. It is almost perfect. Almost. The key here is that everything can be handled through your Wii. Plus, it sends out private messages automatically (much like MapWii) but the best part is that it allows you for the option of having the e-mails go directly to your inbox right on your Wii. The problem here is that it is very impersonal and you have to set your own personal keywords (i.e. what will people have to search for in order to find me? I used my zip code, the name of my town, etc.). It doesn't have predetermined fields that you fill in. So one person might put in their town name and the name of their dog, another person might put in their hair color and the name of their school.
Results: This method is essentially useless unless you want to find some random Wii codes and don't really care about who they are. I did not request any friends through Benmii. However, I did register. During the week of this experiment I recieved 1 friend request which resulted in 1 Wii friend.
So, currently I have 98 Wii codes entered with corresponding PM's/e-mails sent out (the remaining two are my personal e-mail and the BenMii e-mail). I have started to get quite a few back. I let this go a little bit longer and offer up some data.
During the course of the experiment, I recieved two friend requests. In order to make room, I deleted two of the Wii codes I entered in initially (both were from MapWii). So I have 96 total Wii codes entered for the experiment. I let the experiment go for one week which included a full weekend. I recieved a total of 31 new friends from my requests for a return rate of 33%. I am slightly disappointed by this number simply because of the overwhelming responses that I got to many of my private messages. I got a lot of "Cool, I'll add you this weekend..." but many never panned out. Perhaps it will take another week for some of these to pan out. I also believe that since Nintendo's online presence has been lacking to say the least, the interest in having Wii friends right now is not great.
As far as my recommendations go...I would suggest registering with BenMii. It will only take a minute and can result in a friend or to. But it shouldn't be a main source of friends. The best thing is forums. These are people that you already converse with, private message, and have some sort of personal, albeit online, relationship with. The more active the forum the better. But the type of forum is important too.
What do you think? Does anybody have any other good methods or websites that I may have missed?
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