I’ve always been resistant to social networking sites.  I always viewed Myspace as a “friend whoring get-together”, however newer social networking sites are more than just collecting friends.  Sites like Facebook are working to keep friends and family members in touch over the intarwebs in real time allowing you to see what your friends are doing at any given time at a glance.  I’ve been more accepting of this type of movement as it really does help us stay connected rather than just be large conglomeration of strangers.

Enter Raptr.  It shares a lot of the same principles as Facebook, allowing you to stay connected with your friends in real time, but it does so much more.  You can create a list of all of the games you own and games you want as well as share these lists with friends.  You can see stastics regarding games, how many people are playing what games and how often, read and write reviews of games, etc.  There’s even a client you can download that will automatically patch games as new content becomes available for you and keep track of your playing habits and upload it to your profile so you can keep tabs on how you spend your time.  The client is optional of course.

I’ve been in the closed beta for a few months now and I’ve watched it grow from a wire frame of a site into a living, breathing community and I’m proud to have been a part of that.  Raptr is now public and ready for an open beta.  Looks like there are about 2,000 spots open on a first come first served basis.  So be sure to check it out, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on how things go.

Here’s the official announcement:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9877079-52.html