I noticed today that Rupture, the social network from Napster creator Sean Fanning, has become publicly accessible. We covered Rupture, a network based around World of Warcraft, back in December - and after some testing, I think Fanning might have a winner on his hands.
The setup is both standard and highly customized for the task at hand: yes, users have profile pages and friends, but their profiles also list gear, talents, skills, reputation, battlegrounds, add-ons and other interesting game info. Look out, too, for photo sharing, commenting and pages for each realm. WoW users, who are no doubt appalled by some of the horrendously ugly MySpace layouts, with be happy to note that Rupture doesn't seem to offer any customization of the design - no css changes, insertion of code or even ready made skins.
Just like the music social networks populate your page using an iTunes add-on, Rupture provides a download that pulls all your stats from the game and automatically updates your profile - the "Rupture Profiler" only works on Windows for now. I'll need to actually hook it up to a WoW account to get the full effect (you'll need an invite to do so), but the first impressions of Rupture are excellent. However, there is one thing that seems to be missing: real life photos of the users. Surely seeing the face behind the character is part of the appeal, or perhaps I'm out of touch with the needs of the average WoW user?
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