So i've always known that u could post a book to a buddy. But i don't come to the site very often. Do I need to make friends in order to increase my chances of getting popular books?

no, Most of the books go by FIFO and only a few are exchanged through the buddy system...that has been my experience.

Nope.  I post a few books directly to my friends (I also give a few of my books to my friends locally), but the large majority of my books go through FIFO.  From what I've seen, that seems to be the case with most of us who post in forums. 

Plus, the large majority of the PBS population doesn't post in the forums, so it seems likely that most of their books will go through FIFO also.  I'm basing that on the possibly incorrect assumption that how most of us make friends at PBS is via the forums or chat. 

Edited for spelling.

At least 90% of the wishlist books I post go through the FIFO system.  Every once in a while I post directly to a list but I've found that who you know isn't as important as how long are you willing to wait.

Kerry

I post a great portion of my wl books to buddies, and here's why...postage.   I post several books at once to one person's wl in order to send them all together and to save on shipping.

I've never had a buddy post a WL book directly to me, and I've received more WL books than you can shake a stick at.  There are soooooo many people posting books here, that it really doesn't really have an effect.  Not a noticeable one, anyway.

I've only had one book posted directly to my wishlist by a buddy. All the rest of the wishlisted books I've gotten have been through the normal FIFO. 

Sometimes I post to someone's wishlist, but most of them go in the FIFO system.  I cleaned out my bookshelves last week and sent out 15 wishlisted books through FIFO!

Like Michelle said, if you have buddies with the same taste, you can send several books to the same person, and save massively on postage.  I end up posting about 10% of my WL books to buddies. 

If I'm posting a series that no one on my buddy list wants, I post the first one, then see if that person has the rest of them wishlisted.  If so, I'll post as many as I can to the same person and save a bundle on psotage.

I think getting books from friends is just secondary to having the friends, if you know what I mean. :)

I think it works out to about 50/50 for me both sending and receiving. I work at home and am on the forums quite a bit.  Not all day like it may seem but I come for 5-10m here and there throughout the day.  I have a lot of buddies.  I seem to always have about 30WL books in the TBR pile. If one of my buddies has one or more on their WL then I post them right to them.  If no one seems to have the book on WL then I post it to FIFO.  I'll usually check that person's WL and see if there's anything else I can read and post to them to save on postage.  But a lot of times my books go right into FIFO. Either because none of my buddies had the book on WL or I just didn't feel like scanning a bunch of WL's. I just wanted to post the book and be done with it.  Usually I try to find a buddy first.  It seems like everytime I post a WL book to FIFO, it sits there through 2 or 3 time outs before it gets accepted.  When I post to a buddy, I know it'll get requested quickly and I can send it out.

ETA: as far as WL books that I get.  Again it's about 50/50.  I get a lot from buddies because they do the same thing I do.  But I also get a lot of them from FIFO.  I don't have many hard to find, rarely posted books on my  WL. So I end up getting a lot of WL books posted to me. That makes a difference too. If your WL is mostly OOP/HTF, heavy and expensive to buy or mail, or not commonly read type books-than you might wait quite awhile to get them. Because people tend to keep these or sell them and not post them on PBS.

I've never posted directly to anyone on my buddy list.  If they wanted something I was offering I suppose I might, but so far we just don't have the same needs/tastes, apparently.  :)

I've tried to search, but it's very rare that what I'm posting is on my buddies' lists.  I usually just give up and post it through FIFO.

I think I've had a few posted directly to my list, but otherwise, all of the ones offered to me come through FIFO too.