{"id":1195,"date":"2007-03-02T12:14:28","date_gmt":"2007-03-02T17:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1195"},"modified":"2007-03-07T15:22:32","modified_gmt":"2007-03-07T20:22:32","slug":"rupture-to-breach-virtual-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1195","title":{"rendered":"Rupture to Breach Virtual Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just read a post on Clickable Culture (Link)<\/a> regarding ex-Napster Shawn Fanning’s social networking service, Rupture<\/a>, and Blizzard’s new Armory<\/a> player database system. In his post, Tony Walsh makes the following comment: <\/p>\n

Given what Blizzard has shown it can do with data it already collects, I think it would be relatively trivial for the developer to take The Armory into social-networking territory, allowing players to add information to personal profiles, publish buddy-lists, chat, even perform some in-game functions through a web-browser interface. If Blizzard goes this route (and I think it should), Rupture is screwed. Players already spend a lot of time within the official Warcraft community, I don’t see why anyone would sign up for a third-party service and use a software add-on if Blizzard provides social networking services even remotely comparable to Rupture’s offerings.
\nPlayers already spend a lot of time within the official Warcraft community, I don’t see why anyone would sign up for a third-party service and use a software add-on if Blizzard provides social networking services even remotely comparable to Rupture’s offerings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m extraordinarily surprised to read this as I would expect Clickable Culture to see the bigger picture here, especially since the Rupture FAQ that’s referenced includes the following:<\/p>\n

\nRupture is a social network designed to better connect gamers in the virtual world. Rupture allows gamers to track their characters, game data, statistics, scores, share pictures and much more. Additionally, Rupture provides a gamer-based Instant Messaging and Chat client with several gamer-related features built into it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

World of Warcraft is the only current supported game. Development is planned for the support of several other games in the future.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emphasis here is mine.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t think it’s hard to see what Fanning is doing and under other circumstances I’d simply post this as a comment on Clickable Culture. However, given my recent post on Kaneva (reLink<\/a>), I think it’s worth giving Rupture another look and providing a bit more perspective.<\/p>\n

As a regular reader of Blogspotting, I’d read about the Rupture project in a Heather Green post (Link)<\/a>. At the time I was too busy to give this any thought other than mentally linking it to Xfire<\/a>, the same service I once predicted would be the object of a rather large buyout (reLink<\/a> – it was picked up by MTV). Contrary to Clickable Culture’s assertion that “Rupture is screwed”, I believe it’s actually capable of doing something somewhat remarkable: outliving every videogame and virtual world currently available.<\/p>\n

Unlike Blizzard, Rupture isn’t tied to a single property. World of Warcraft will eventually fade away; the users won’t. Groups of users (guilds, clans, whatever) move from game to game; virtual world to virtual world. The one thing that ties them all together is the Net, and Rupture exists on that level. It’s user-centric, not game-centric. Rupture isn’t competing with the games or the worlds, it’s competing with XBox Live, Xfire, and all the other social networking services out there.<\/p>\n

My assertion is that this will get some attention, especially when Rupture taps into the statistics for a second game. After that, watch this service grow into something much more interesting; a Ning<\/a> for 3D worlds perhaps. And just like Xfire, someone big will buy it; someone looking to mine player data for market research and advertising. The only question in my mind now is: who?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just read a post on Clickable Culture (Link) regarding ex-Napster Shawn Fanning’s social networking service, Rupture, and Blizzard’s new Armory player database system. In his post, Tony Walsh makes the following comment: Given what Blizzard has shown it can do … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}