"The Friendship Bug: My anecdotal evidence that suggests it's just a visual bug"

#PokemonGO: I've been working on my friendships to facilitate trades, and have noticed some of them growing and others not. Almost all of my interactions to grow these friendships has been through gift giving and receiving, so I can't speak as much about raiding, battling, and trading's impact on this. What I have observed:1) The first person to open a gift that day is the one who sees the gain in friendship2) The person who sends the gift does not see the gain in friendshipThe positive takeaway: I've been sending gifts to a guy to allow us to complete a Heracross for Shiny Lugia trade. He had been the one opening the gifts, so on my end it had said that we were good friends with 6 days remaining to reach the next level. We recently decided to do an alternation strategy, so I opened the gift tonight after midnight passed and the friendship immediately jumped to 3 days remaining to reach the next level. That jump in friendship is reassuring that by the time we reach great friend status, chances are good that the level up will be experienced by both of us.Hope this helps. I'm not sure if this is true in all situations, but test it for yourself and see if you observe the same. It's held true for 100% of my gift sending and opening interactions ever since I made the hypothesis one night ago.Edit #1: Lots of comments discussing additional bugs in the system. From what I am reading, battling, raiding, and trading might have more serious bugs compared to gift giving. A potential work around would be to focus on gift giving with your top priority friends, the ones you want to reach best friend status with the quickest, before doing any other interactions that day. One person sends the gift, the other opens, and then go ahead and start doing other stuff together that day.Edit #2: Throughout the comments, we might be honing in on the bug and possible work arounds for it. A lot of people are suggesting that doing raids, battler, or trades with friends who have outstanding gifts might be what's causing more serious issues with friendship simply not going up. For now, I'd suggest testing out the following work around: Make sure one of you has opened a gift that day before doing any battles, raids, or trades so that the friendship gets the appropriate level up that day (or simply don't do gifts with the people you plan on doing these things with). Hopefully this works for you. I haven't tried to level up many friendships through battlers, raids, or trades, and that might explain why I have had my friendships go up more smoothly than others. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2yENrF1