One of the better features on iMobsters is the ability to broadcast messages to your Mafia. Of course, that's only worthwhile if you have a gang larger than one.

That points to the biggest drawback of Mafia Wars, iMobsters and iMob, too: The relative difficulty of building your Mafia. It's often the case that the bigger you are, the harder you fall. What Zynga and like-minded developers need to do is make it easier for players to network and build their gangs from their handhelds. Currently, the games rely on players recruiting from their e-mail and phone address books. But as anyone who has tried to recruit their "real" friends on Facebook knows, it simply isn't enough.

If you've imported your hundreds of Mafiosi from Facebook, you will find yourself blasting away at other gangs of one or maybe two. On Facebook, there are dozens--hundreds?--of groups dedicated to helping you build your Mafia as quickly as possible. There are several Internet forums devoted to building your mob for the iPhone version as well. And yet I suspect few players really want to spend a lot of time trolling boards for adds and typing in a bunch of ID numbers on their phones. Where's the fun in that? I don't know about you, but I'd rather be gunning down rivals and pulling off the next big mega-casino heist. The developer who finds a way to overcome this problem would make an app that players couldn't refuse.

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