Raptr: Gaming social network adds community driven news feed

Raptr, a social network designed with people who play games in mind, has been around for about three years -- and tracks all of your gaming activities, whether its playing FarmVille on Facebook or games on consoles, such as Xbox and the PlayStation 3.

Starting this week, the social network has added a new dimension to its service -- a custom, community-created news feed based on the games you play. So, for instance, if you're a big fan of FarmVille and, say, all games for the Nintendo Wii -- you can log into Raptr and check out news, videos, screenshots, reviews and status updates on those particular topics.

The Raptr social news platform works similar to sites like Digg or Reddit -- the Raptr community can post links to articles, et al, and the community can vote those articles up or down. The more votes an article gets, the higher it shows up in the news feed (and, of course, that means more people will be able to read it as well).

Currently the gamer's social network has 8 million registered users, tracks more than 23 million game sessions a month and 1.2 billion minutes of gameplay a month.

Of course, one of the more compelling parts of Raptr is the sheer amount of data it collects from its many members. Not only can that data be used to recommend new games (or in the users' case, to learn about games) but can also unearth some interesting factoids -- like how many people to play Madden football also play FarmVille. It's more than you might think.