These consumers like to spend their hard earned money on impulse purchases such as armor for your stallion, retro-arcade games, or a new hideaway for your well-groomed assassin. You can even get “Gamercards,” or membership cards, to support your favorite game and show the world how officially geeky you really are.

Impulse shoppers are our friends. And better yet, these geeky shoppers like to travel in packs and form their own little Utpoias surrounded by fellow geeks who can’t get enough multi-player maps for blowing up their friends playing Halo 2. I admit, I am one of them, but don’t be afraid — at least in real life, because if you are on the blue team at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday in the Ivory Tower map, you better be armed with a Covenant sword, or you best just run.

My point is that online social networks expand beyond the typical “Facebooks” and “MySpaces” of the blogosphere and into the world of online gaming. There are forums for almost every multiplayer game available for the Xbox360, including web sites specific to those games. Within these forums you can check up on your friends, send messages to each other, plan parties and competitions. You can compare your advancement within a game to one of your friends, or even blog about your performance. Bungie.net and Xbox.com are only a few of the sites out there offering gamers refuge, but there are many more.

This is an opportunity for us to tap our talented resources and expand beyond our typical soapbox, blog mentality and create dynamic, online communities full of commerce, live messaging, steaming video and graphics that will make your jaws drop. Let’s not just create places where you can go to read the latest microwave review, or telemarket the blogosphere with PR buzz about the tastiest soft drink — let’s create homes where consumers can join fellow consumers and play.

I know what you are thinking — don’t we already do this? My answer is no. We create buzz, not communities. There is something beyond the blog out there, buried in this cyberweb of white noise and Broadway glitter. Hosting on-line communities might be the answer, but for now, I will retreat to my cave and hang out with a few friends in Geekdom. Join me so you, too, can see what I am talking about.