Napster Creator's Latest Venture Bought by Electronic Arts for $30M
by Tim Stevens, posted Jun 5th 2008 at 7:02AM
Shawn Fanning (pictured, above) is, in many ways, the man who started the decline of the music industry. Back in the late '90s while still a college student, he created Napster, the peer-to-peer file sharing service that allowed millions of users to swap illegal copies of music quickly and easily. More importantly, his invention got people thinking about the value of recorded music and eventually inspired some bands to release albums for free. Unfortunately for Fanning, though, the original Napster (not the current music subscription service of the same name) went bankrupt in a hurry. Not so for his latest endeavor, which was just purchased by Electronic Arts (EA) for a reported $30-million.
The company is called ThreeSF, and it has so far existed as a platform for a new online service called Rupture. It is basically a social network for gamers; a venue for them to show off their in-game achievements. It ties directly to services like Microsoft's Xbox Live and Valve's Steam, which allow it to figure out what gamers have been up to and post those happenings on those gamers' pages. This way people can show off their skills and also find other gamers with similar interests to play against.
What exactly EA will be doing with the fledgling service is unknown, but expect something like an EA-branded community for players of EA games like 'Spore' and 'The Sims' -- because what the world really needs is an other social network. [Source: Rupture]
