The Wordsmith's Forge

This edition of followfriday focuses on communities that help people find new friends. They generally have a template that you can fill out to introduce yourself and your interests. You can also just lurk to see if anyone else's posts appeal to you. Some add-me communities are thematic, others general.

Aside from using these communities to find friends for yourself, they have another use: whenever you see someone say that they're new on Dreamwidth, recommend that they visit one or more add-me communities to form connections. The more friends people make here, the more likely they are to stick around; and conversely, if they don't make friends, they're less likely to stay.

Another application of them supports followfriday -- if you don't already have recent posts in any friending communities, go make a few. Then create a post about that for Follow Friday. This way, if people visit your blog from the friending community, they will also discover Follow Friday, which is another good way to make connections that might interest them.


addme Friending Community -- A Place to Find New Friends (general)

addme_furry  -- Addme Furry.
[EDIT 8/11/23, active with multiple posts in July.]

addme40s -- A community for those 40 & over!

add_a_writer -- A thematic community to connect writers with people who want to read them.

findingfriends -- This is a community to help people find friends on Dreamwidth!

friendfinder -- Find. Meet. Connect. Find new journaling friends!

heroes_add_me -- Heroes Add Me
Heroes Fandom Add Me Comm

rainbow_lounge -- An LGBTQ add-me community.
Despite the "lounge" term, it's actually a friending community, not an all-purpose hangout community.

sherlock_add_me -- Sherlock Add Me / Friending Meme
An add me comm/friending meme for the Sherlock fandoms

startrek_add_me -- Finding friends within the Star Trek fandom
A Star Trek Friending Meme / Add Me Comm


A search for friending communities also turned up the interesting concept family_of_choice which never went anywhere beyond its profile description, but the structure was apparently based on a once-common community style of mentorship and FOC networks. While this community was moderated and would thus be hard to revive, the same structure could be replicated elsewhere if people wish to do so, and seems like a promising approach to creating strong networks of friends.


EDIT 2/18/22 -- vriddy has a post with links on how to find and promote communities.