Introducing Contact Importer and Friend Recommendations
Today, we’re excited to announce the rollout of two new features to make it easier to find and connect with friends on Roblox: Contact Importer and Friend Recommendations. Experiences on Roblox can be more amazing and enjoyable when you are with people that you know. Now you will be able to import your phone contacts with Contact Importer and also discover new connections with Friend Recommendations. As with all of our features, we’ve taken the necessary steps to carefully test them over time to ensure a safe, high-quality experience for our community.
Contact Importer
Users can opt in to Contact Importer to easily find and connect with their real-life friends by uploading contacts from their phone and matching those contacts with other users on Roblox that have opted into letting their friends find them by phone number. To make it even easier, Contact Importer uses the same contact names saved within a users’ device so they can quickly recognize their friends on Roblox’s platform.
For example, if someone saves a number in their phone under the nickname “Big Sis,” the number will also appear to them as "Big Sis” on Roblox when importing their contacts. Once imported, this nickname will be shown in addition to their Roblox display name on surfaces like their profile, making it easier to keep track of contacts on Roblox. As a privacy measure, only the user uploading their contacts will be able to see their contact names.
To ensure privacy and safety, users can choose whether others can find them with their phone number – this provides them clear control of their privacy options, a step beyond industry standards. Contact Importer will begin to roll out to 13+ year old phone verified users this week.
Friend Recommendations
Friend Recommendations provide a list of suggested people you may know and want to connect with on Roblox. With Friend Recommendations now being featured on the home page, users 13 and older can easily review these suggestions and add friends directly. This feature has been designed to recommend only high-quality connections for our users with contextual indicators. For example, we may recommend a user with whom someone has many mutual connections.
Experiencing Roblox Through Connections
The vision of Roblox is to reimagine the way people come together. This is already happening for our 58 million daily active users worldwide as they enjoy the variety of experiences from our amazing creators and connect and hang out with friends – just like in the real world. The rollout of Contact Importer and Friend Recommendations is an important step in helping make it easier for users to connect, while continuing to uphold the privacy and safety of our community.