By Aaron Seaney

I am a proud member of the Myspace and Facebook community and have been for quite some time, I admit that I really enjoy the networking aspect of both sites, and it allows me to keep in touch with friends that without these sites I might have lost touch with years ago.

Of course that is the deal with those two sites, you simply go to them to find people you already know, and because of this there is very little room for you to branch out and meet new people. Of course meeting new people is something the internet can be great for if you know where to look, because the one thing the internet has over meeting people at a party or other places is you automatically have a common ground. That is why websites like this are great for people who like to meet new people with special interests. Pwned.com is a new site that recently started popping up on gamers radar over the past month, and is very quickly growing in their open Beta period, and while most people would automatically want to call this a myspace for gamers, at a closer look you will find that they have much more to offer than your run of the mill online community.

The site was created by Andrew Briggs and his vision was quite simple: “Pwned.com was created for gamers, and I play games myself. Whenever I would play Call of Duty 4 online, or even Halo 3, I didn’t have any friends that played games and I would play online by myself. So I figured, why not create a site where other people can find others who play the same games... Basically I just want people to enjoy a community where everyone can get along and actually find other people who play the same games as them.”

Pwned.com has a ton of features from browsing any video game and talking about it, to an arcade section where you can play mini games, to my personal favorite the shoutbox, where users can come and chat about whatever, and unlike message boards it is a bit more live updating every 25 seconds. The other impressive thing that pwned offers is a very interactive way to pull people in, and make sure they actually take a look around, it’s called pwned points, and you get them just for doing a number of tasks that aren’t listed anywhere on the site, basically rewarding you for exploring. Once enough points are earned they can receive things like PS3s, iPods, 360s etc.

Other features separate them from other game communities as well. Andrew went on to say “Our site has actually been completely catered to gamers with features that other sites fall short on, such as finding people in your area who play the same types of games.” With such a strong site, and great community, this is a site that most gamers will want to check out, and as a reward to anyone who joins in during the beta period they will be receiving double points for using the site for the duration of the beta. The site is expected to go completely functional and public sometime this summer. But with no limit to the beta I don’t really know what’s stopping you from checking it out right now.