Best UI/design patterns to find my users' friends who are also my users

Question

What's a good design pattern to find my app's users' friends (facebook, linkedIn, twitter), etc who are also configured with my app?

Eg, my party app has party organizers. The organizers add party people by name/email. Later a party person logs in via Facebook. I want to show her which of her friends will also be at the party.

Should I

1. send an email to ALL party people, asking them to login to my app via FB, Twitter, LinkedIn? I'd send the email as soon as I get the email address. That way, later, when someone logs in, I can exactly match by FB/LinkedIn id and tell the user which of their friends/connections is also attending the party

2. When a person logs in via LinkedIn, FB, show just the friends/connections of others who have previously logged in. (Can't verify FB/LinkedIn friends by email, just by id. So need to wait until my app has learned the FB/linkedIn id of the other person when they logged in.)

3. When a person logs in via LinkedIn, FB, show the friends/connections that MAY be attending the party? -- By doing a match on fname/lname? This method doesn't require that the friend has already logged into my app, but does mean that I could say that "Your friend Jim Jones may be the same as the Jim Jones who is attending the party"

Any good examples of this design pattern?

Thanks,

Larry

Answer 1

That's a tricky situation. While you want your users to have a good user experience by knowing which of their friends will be attending the event too, you also want them to have a good experience by making it as simple as possible for them to register for the event.

What I would suggest would be to make it optional. Put a find friend who are attending now button/image on the main page they see in your app. The graphic should be something that draws their attention and really makes them want to spend the extra effort to find out. Then from there give them dialog that asks which of the three social networks they want to look for. Then iterate thru each of the ones the user has chosen prompting for app access. Store each of the user id's and access tokens from the various social networks in your database under the same user in your database. (don't query on first/last ... that's not a good option...just use each network's unique identifier)

Of course the first user to do this will have the worst experience since none of the other people have done this. But it gets better with adoption.

Good luck on your project!