Over the last decade, massive multiplayer online games and virtual worlds ranging from World of Warcraft to Second Life have emerged as centres for synchronous social activity. Whether across town or around the world, meaningful friendships have emerged from these worlds, reflecting shared interests and values. Inevitably, these intensifying social connections are beginning to expand beyond the environments in which they were originally formed -- resulting in a situation where the social gaming experience has extended beyond the games themselves.

The online contexts in which these game-based social networks are appearing, are as disparate as the source games and virtual worlds themselves. Groups associated with these platforms have emerged on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and similar social networks. As Facebook's explosive success has demonstrated, the sum total of these multilayered, multidirectional social ties provides more value than the aggregated value of individual relationships; a network effect kicks in.

The well-established principles of the network effect, or Metcalfe's law, will be familiar to those in the telecommunications industry. The concept is easily transferable to a social network. Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (/n/²). A social network like that graphed on Facebook obviously exists before it's mapped, but its inherent value can't be unlocked until it is charted this way.

Companies are thus emerging to map and harness the value of cross-platform social networks that are specifically oriented around gamers.

If you study the trends carefully, the services and platforms emerging to house and connect these social networks can be broadly divided into four categories. They are catering to:

1. serious, hard-core gamers;
2. casual gamers;
3. console-oriented gamers;
4. hybrid social game models; and
5. networks that exploit existing mainstream social networks.

Needless to say, there is some overlap between these groups.

Serious gamers can be found at raptr, The Steam Community, ugame network and (soon enough) Rupture. Raptr was formed in 2007 by gaming "celebrity" Dennis Fong. The site automatically tracks users' gaming stats and achievements and shares them with their friends. Similarly, users can see what their friends are playing, what they've recently downloaded, and how they're doing in those games. Steamcommunity.com is operated by Seattle-based game development company Valve Corporation. Rupture, on the other hand, is rumoured to be launching in the very near future -- it was created by Shawn Fanning of Napster fame. Ugame.net is a start up touting the fact that it caters to over 100 gaming environments.

Casual gamers gather at the myspace games, Kongregate, RealArcade, The Casual Collective and Instant Action among others. Kongregate, launched in 2006, promotes user-submitted Flash games by allowing anyone to add their own games to its library. It is currently refining its advertising model, which may be of interest to iMedia readers.

InstantAction, owned by InterActiveCorp, was launched this week. The new kid on the block is premised on bringing more sophisticated games to casual gamers who primarily play on the web. These players will be connected to a backbone of instant messaging.

Next week, we look at some of the dominant players in the console arena and track their developments.

Ted Tagami is vice president, business development of Millions of Us. Read full bio.