WoWPals.net is a brand new social networking site targeted at you WoW players that just got a nice bit of coverage over on VentureBeat's GamesBeat site. Social networking is taking off just as much as World of Warcraft lately, and so there's a whole slew of companies trying to step up and become the de facto social service for gamers, from GamerDNA and Rupture to wowtwitter and even our own little enterprise. WoWPals isn't too different -- it's run by a few gamers based in Israel, and is currently in alpha, and hoping for a beta by the end of the year. You register to the site with your first character, and after a short wait for an activation email, you can jump in and find friends by guild or server, or punch in your location and search around that way. Once you're friends, there's not much more to do but chat and message each other, but what more do you need, really?

Personally, I think WoW already covers the bases of a social network (though in the past I've said I would like to have the option to see more about players than the characters, and these sites can certainly fill that need), so all of these end up being either extraneous -- do I really need another Twitter just for my characters? -- or just plain unnecessary: maybe I don't want my friends to know exactly what I did in game last night.

So no, I personally haven't been sold on any of these sites yet (though I do like reading through the player blogs here on WoW.com, and I'm not just saying that because I work here). I'm active ingame, and I'm active on various social networks, and keeping the two separate is fine by me. But if you are looking for even more ways to find new friends in World of Warcraft, maybe you can meet some new pals with WoWPals, too.

Tags: finding-friends, friends, gamers, gamesbeat, israel, sharing, signup, social-networking, social-service, wow, wow-com, wow-players, wowpals

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends