Years and years ago (when the Earth was new and dinosaurs roamed the lands) a certain person named Shawn Manning created a program called Napster. It was incredibly popular because a) it let people trade music on the Internet and b) it was free. However, the music industry didn't like how Napster was being used and almost as soon as it became popular the company was forced into bankruptcy. It also made Shawn Fanning an Internet icon (it even got him a cameo in The Italian Job).

Now a new company that Fanning co-founded may actually make him some real money. Techcrunch is reporting through unnamed sources that Rupture, a gaming oriented social networking web site, is about to be bought by Electronic Arts for $30 million. According to the story Fanning and his Rupture partner Jon Baudanza will become employees of EA when the deal is concluded. It speculates that EA has bought the site for its technology; Rupture pulls data and stats from games like Team Fortress 2 and World of Warcraft and allows you to chat and share that info with Rupture subscribers. If all this is true it will be interesting to see how EA uses this in its games.