Patent ID: 8480494

Claim:
A method for crew creation and management in a social gamming program, the social gaming program being in communication with a social networking system that provides data regarding friends related by a social graph, comprising: providing a user interface by the social gaming program for generating a request for help by a requestor to enable access to a content item in the social gaming program, the request for help being forwarded to friends of the requestor based on analysis of the social graph to define a crew of friends in the social gaming program; generating a display dialog to graphically illustrate status of the progress, the display dialog including images indicative of the crew of friends that accepted the request for help; in the display dialog, providing an option for payment by the requester in addition to the request for help or in lieu of receiving acceptance for help by friends, the payment by the requester acting to cause completion of the progress to provide access to the content item; obtaining an indication of acceptance of the request for help from at last one friend of the requestor, the acceptance utilized to increase a progress toward enabling access to the content item; detecting completion of the progress by the crew of friends and enabling access to the content item, the detected completion being saved to a crew database to signal a level change in the social gaming program; and providing an update to the user interface of the requestor to signal access to the content item, and each member of the crew of friends receiving a corresponding update from the social gaming program, the method being executed by a processor.