Does Find Friends use iCloud or Apple ID?

My Apple ID (used for the iTunes Store) is different from my iCloud ID. My Apple ID does not have the suffix "@me.com", while my iCloud ID does. When I log into Find Friends, the field for user ID only allows the use of an ID with an @me.com suffix. Therefore, it appears that it requires the iCloud login.

However, I get account verification errors when I try to accept a friend request, or when I send a request. The error message sends me to the browser with the link appleid.apple.com to verify my account. However this page only allows me to verify my Apple ID for the iTunes store, and not the iCloud ID.

WTF???? So what is it? What do I do now????

I solved the problem, and this may want to be made a sticky as I've seen on Apple's discussion site that many people are experiencing this problem.

The problem probably stems from old users of the iTunes Store. In the past, your ID did not have to be an email address. At some point, I believe that changed and your iTunes Store (also known as Apple ID) either could be an email address or was required to become an email address. Mine was not.

So, for example, my Apple ID/iTunes Store ID was johndoe.

My former MobileMe and now iCloud ID was johndoe@me.com.

The Find Friends app requires that the username be xxx@xxx.xxx. You CANNOT have a username that does not end in "@xxx.xxx". Further, the Friends App uses (at least in my case) my Apple ID, and not my iCloud ID. Further, Apple DOES NOT ALLOW your Apple ID to be the same as your iCloud email. Therefore, when I was diagnosing this problem, I could not change my Apple ID to johndoe@me.com, as that was prohibited. So, I changed my AppleID and primary email for that to johndoe@gmail.com (an older email account that I still maintain). These changes can be made at appleid.apple.com.

I then entered that as the user ID in the Find Friends App, and BINGO, it worked.

After doing this, you must remember to change the account settings in Settings>Store to reflect the new Apple ID.

I hope this helps someone. It was bugging me all day long.