Nintendo's first phone app, Miitomo, is a surprisingly fun social network

For years, some people have been asking Nintendo to make games for smart phones. They want to play Mario or Pokemon or Zelda on a touch screen.

Instead, Nintendo has delivered something that's both very Nintendo and very un-Nintendo. They've made a social network.

The free app, called Miitomo, is not like Facebook or Twitter. At least, not really.  You don't post statuses or selfies or pictures of your food. For the most part, Miitomo is about asking and answering questions.

And after only being available for a short time (a mere day in North America), word is spreading and people are loving it.

You begin by making a Mii -- a cartoonish avatar of yourself (or whoever you want it to be, really. There are no limits). This will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has spend a good chunk of time with a Wii, Wii U or 3DS. The creation tools are more or less the same, though you have a lot more fashion options when it comes to outfits. More on that later.

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Your Mii is you, but it acknowledges itself as a separate entity. So this cartoon version of yourself asks you its first question: "What's your favorite food?"

You can answer whatever you want (I almost went with "Cheeseburgers," but ultimately my loyalty lies with my mom's homemade spaghetti recipe), and your Mii will remember the answer. The catch, though, is that the answer will be shared with all of your friends.

Friends are most easily added by connecting Miitomo to Facebook and/or Twitter. You can't search for a friend's username, but it will help you connect to people on your Facebook friends list or people who you mutually follow on Twitter. Alternatively, you can add friends "face to face" if you're in the same location as a friend.

You don't do much interacting with your friends directly in Miitomo. Every time you come back to the app, your Mii will report new bits of information about your friends that it has learned by socializing while you were away. For example, one thing my Mii said to me was, "In case you're curious, Susan has always wanted to read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

That's a fun fact about GamesRadar editor Susan Arendt that I didn't know, and frankly it's not something I would have thought to ask in casual conversation. Now, thanks to Miitomo, I feel a little closer to a friend.

At first blush, this seems like a pointless thing that could get old fast. Just answering questions about yourself and reading the responses of people you know? That sounds more like work than play.

Yet I've found myself checking Miitomo multiple times per day just to see what's new. Do I have any new comments on any of my more clever question responses? Has a new friend answered the question about celebrity crushes yet?

Thankfully, there's also more to do than just type and read. For starters, whenever you do interact with friends you get coins. At the moment, the primary use of coins is to buy new clothing items for your Mii -- anything from cat outfits to a sailor-like top to caps to dresses to tennis shoes. It's a pretty safe bet that Nintendo will expand your purchasing options in the future, however (my money is that room customization items will be available sooner rather than later).

Another way to get clothing items and accessories is by playing Miitomo Drop, a Plinko-esque game where you drop a Mii onto a board in the hopes that it will land on top of an exciting prize.

If you want, you can take those outfits and pose your Mii (and others) in front of fun backgrounds (or photos you take with your phone) to create fun images to share either through Miitomo or on Twitter or Facebook.

Or if you want to get creative you can go way out there and create your own uses for these images.

Even if you don't mess with that stuff, though, getting to know your friends through the questions in the app is surprisingly addictive. Especially because Nintendo makes it very easy to go back through your old answers to see if any friends have commented on them.

Miitomo's biggest strength, though, is its charm. Mii characters are cute, and the synthesized voices they use to read every question and answer to you are funnier than they probably should be.

Through and through, Nintendo has created one of the most clever and inventive ways of getting to know other people that I've seen on a mobile device. It won't replace Facebook on your phone, but it can definitely be a fun way to get closer to the people around you -- or at least have a few laughs as you all goof off together.