I see a lot of potential for trading in a social game (If you can ONLY get bumbleberry seeds through me, do I hold out to screw you? Give them to you free because it’s us vs. game? Trade for something I can only get through you?) but the free gifts turn to spam so quickly. I blame Farmville/Zynga in part, for offering so many ways to spam your friends, making “send to absolutely everyone” the default option and providing in-game bonuses for harassing as many people as possible, but I also blame the folks blanketing their friends with self-interested “gifts”.

That doesn’t invalidate the idea of utilizing a social dynamic like that in a game, though. I think the potential is fascinating. I can envision a system that encouraged REAL gifting rather than just empowering you to spam your friends, and that WOULD be interesting. Restrict the sending of gifts to one, or possibly a handful at a time, and have the benefits to the sender only occur if, say, the person on the recieving end actually uses it enough or does certain things with it, so that some thought is actually put into what sort of thing to send to who.