Rapture

Lots of tongues wagging about Rapture, the new social network project from Shawn Fanning.

Mashable:

"Napster founder Shawn Fanning is about to launch another new project in the social networking space: Rupture is a social site for online gamers that has already raised seed money from investors including Joi Ito and Ron Conway."

Business Week:

"Rupture was inspired by Fanning's newfound love of online gaming. During the past year and a half, he's become a big fan of World of Warcraft, joining a guild and climbing up the ranks of players. The more he played, though, the more he became frustrated with how hard it is to communicate with other players, organize game playing together and learn about other gamers' identities, online and offline."

Susan Wu:

"But there’s still market opportunity for someone to provide a cohesive and comprehensive toolset that sits atop the core WoW experience - wrapped up in a UI targeted towards the average user."

Venture Beat:

"Experts say this is a promising area, because millions of gamers have formed communities with each other through playing, but their interactions have been limited by the confines of proprietary software. Why not open up these interactions to the full richness of the Web, let gamers flirt with each other, communicate offline or any number of other things?"