Not content with building some very successful MySpace music players through his company Snocap, 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. More specifically, the plan is to focus on building a social network around World of Warcraft.
Mashable has already reported on the launch of one World of Warcraft social network, and many more are filling up my inbox. These include MMO Guildsites, a social network for users of MMOGs built on Ruby on Rails (it launched this week) and GuildCafe (launches on Monday). The comments on that original post express mixed opinions: some Warcraft users are interested in connecting with other players through a social network, while others feel that WoW is social enough already.
According to BusinessWeek, which first mentioned the launch, Fanning is a big WoW fan - he's been climbing the ranks for the past 18 months. He found it frustratingly hard to connect with other plays and organize game play together - hence, Rupture was born. Rupture automatically pulls game data from WoW and posts it to your profile - details like your name and rank. It's not clear, however, how WoW's creators Blizzard Entertainment will react to that.