FarmVille Friends feature finally launches; add neighbors without being Facebook buddies

For the past few weeks, we've been given you details about a then unreleased feature in FarmVille called "FarmVille Friends," which will - to put it simply - allow you to add new FarmVille neighbors without being Facebook friends. Finally, this feature has launched in the game, allowing you to browse through a list of possible neighbor suggestions to find just the right people for you.

You'll be greeted with this feature automatically once the update has rolled around to your game. From there, you'll have to take a trip to the "Add Neighbors" tab at the top of the FarmVille game page to see a list of five strangers at a time that you could add as FarmVille neighbors without actually adding them as Facebook friends. You'll see their first names, in-game levels, profile pictures (where available), locations and the last time they played. You'll then either have the option of sending them a neighbor request directly or visiting their farm to see if they have many of the game's newest features to be sure they're really an active player.

If you happen to have any mutual Facebook friends with that person, that information will be displayed as well, and you can tell who the mutual friend is by hovering over the orange banner, as seen above. If you don't wish to add any of those five strangers as FarmVille neighbors, you can click on the "See More" button at right to refresh your selection.

Keep in mind, as you're able to see others in this feature, so too can people see you. You may appear in players' groups of five, where others can add you as FarmvVille neighbors instead. You'll see these requests in the Zynga Messaging Center upon logging into the game, and can simply click to accept or ignore the request as you see fit.

If you'd rather remove yourself from this feature entirely (that is, remove yourself from the pool of possible neighbors, and not add any strangers as neighbors yourself), this is accomplished by scrolling all of the way down the Add Neighbors tab and unchecking the "FarmVille Friends" box, as seen below. Should you change your mind later, you can always check the box again to put yourself back in the pool.

Once you've become neighbors with these users, you'll be able to visit their farms and send them free gifts as normal, but it doesn't look like our interactions can spread much beyond that as of this writing. That makes this feature questionable in quality, but you can always try it out on a few neighbors to see if it positively changes your gameplay around the farm.