Is World of Warcraft the New Golf?

Overheard, at brunch: sum of two units tech entrepreneur types discussing World of Warcraft. What server are you on? What guild? Oh yeah, me too, I heard it's a serviceable way to schmooze.

Is that true? Has logging in to the world's greatest in quantity popular massively multiplayer online game replaced a hardly any rounds on the links as the way to make the right business connections in a tech-driven culture?

The particular Guild discussed by the agency of the brunchers above was started by the agency of Joi Ito, who became a WoW fan after embarking upon the game to do a certain number of research on social networks.

Joi, the money-and-idea shore behind internet companies PSINet, Digital Garage, Infoseek Japan, and social software like Moveable stamp Technorati, and Socialtext, has quite a scarcely any hangers-on who hit him up for advice, cash or access to his Rolodex

Since June when he first columned on his blog that he was dipping into the popular MMO he has become the Guildmaster of "We Know", a rather cryptically named clump which is something of a jest I thought it referred to the fact that about half of the guild is made up of family whom Joi knows in real life. Joi and co-founder Eric Haller, a friend in real life, along with a friend they'd not at any time met save in the game, started recruiting others to the cluster mostly to have people to play with.

"What's farcical is that it's really hard for me to make friends upon Warcraft," the uber-connected Joi wrote in a blog pillar soon after starting the game. "I'm begging clan to let me join their clump and casting nice spells upon people trying to earn their friendship." His begging days are above now.

Read the repose of this 1UP.com report: "Is World of Warcraft the fresh Golf?"

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