REVIEW: Raptr – A social network for gamers

Raptr is a new social network that launched today which focuses on gamers. I’ve had a quick play around with it, and I’m actually very impressed. The services tracks your Xbox Live, PS3 and Wii gaming, as well as Steam, Guitar Hero, XFire, and World of Warcraft on the PC. When someone in your friends list starts a game on any of those services, an alert pops up and you can jump right in and join them.

The interface is very slick, and the sign-up process is remarkably brief for a system which must be pretty complicated in the back-end. You get a profile, news feed and friends list, much like every other social network, and there’s also a downloadable Adobe Air application which lets you chat with other users, and also downloads game updates for you.

Even better, the service integrates with Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed to push out notifications when you’re playing a game or when you get an achievement – like dinging 70, for example. Upon a friend dinging 70, of course, you can go to their profile and issue them with a “gratz” message.

There’s also a “games collection” feature, which lets you list the games you own. When you play one of those games it logs it, and you can see when you tend to play a particular game and cross-reference it with when your friends play, hopefully helping you to sync up playing times and reducing the time you have to solo grind. They’ve even got Minesweeper on it.

Lastly, there’s a “Gamer Card” feature, like many services, that you can embed onto your blog or other social network page. I’ve embedded mine below.

Feel free to add me if you want to. I haven’t got a tonne of activity on the site yet because I’ve just moved to a new flat and haven’t sorted out broadband. I’m also exclusively a PC gamer, so bear that in mind.

You can sign up for Raptr right here. I’m going to stick with the service for the time being, and might try and get some friends to sign up. The statistical analysis is awesome, but I’m a little bit shy of revealing the fact that I’ve just dinged 50 to Facebook friends that I haven’t seen since school. I can imagine some hardcore players going nuts for that feature, though.

Are you a gamer? Would you use this? Or do you use gaming to escape from the real world and don’t want to be social with it? Let us know, as ever, in the comments.

Raptr (via Silicon Alley Insider)

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