Electronic Arts has acquired a social network firm called ThreeSF, which was headed by the founder of Napster, Shawn Fanning. Apparently, the videogame publisher paid around 30 million dollars for the company, although EA has not yet officially released any concrete details regarding the acquisition.

The company proved to be so appealing because one of the services it is developing, a social network called Rupture, that is aimed specifically at gamers. Rupture is designed to allow each videogames player that uses it to post his experiences, the challenges he has come across in certain games, his gaming related achievements and any other information regarding his playing habits, so that anyone included in his friends network can then access this information freely - by using the social network, of course.

It seems that, in addition to manual input from the users, Rupture will also use custom made software embedded on computers to gather game related data and then upload it to the social network. ThreeSF has designed the whole system to be independent of the publisher of the game and also independent of the platform on which the game runs.

Even with Electronic Arts buying the developing company and therefore the social network itself, the exact date when it will go live is still unknown. For a period, Rupture had been in closed beta testing. But, as Electronic Arts has so far refused to comment on its plans regarding the social network application, anyone can speculate on whether we will see an EA-only social network for gamers or whether the application from ThreeSF will be free to use for any gamer.

It's a good idea to create such a network aimed specifically at gamers, a place where one is not frowned upon for ranting about Mass Effect or for talking about rushing in Kane's Wrath. The only question is whether gamers will take time from playing games to actually use this social network.