The Business of Connecting Gamers

Gamers create an account on Raptr and hand over identifying information from networks such as Xbox Live, and they can quickly learn what friends are online and what games they are playing. Besides console and PC games, the service tracks some 2,000 different games on the Web

clipped from www.google.com People who spend most of their lives playing computer gamers are often thought of as loners. But many of them are just as social as anyone else–they just want to socialize with their own kind. That’s why Dennis Fong, a former professional computer gamer and serial entrepreneur is launching Raptr.com, a startup whose service is entering a public beta test Thursday. The company does what social-aggregator sites such FriendFeed do for more normal folk–help gamers keep track of what their friends are doing, what online games they are playing and discover new games they might like. Otherwise, finding fellow gamers can be a hit-or-miss process of logging on to multiple gaming sites, or social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Raptr is “kind of like FriendFeed for your gaming activities,” Fong says. “How else do you figure out what else is out there?”