doof – Play Games, Have fun!

There are SO many social networks out there these days that come in all kinds of flavors – from the dog lover networks to the social networks for book enthusiasts. For those of you who enjoy playing games online, doof is the social network for you. It recently launched into beta and after reading a few positive reviews, I thought I’d give it a try. It’s all about playing games, meeting people, competing, and having fun. The first thing I had to do was sign-up for an account which I did at www.doof.com.  Once you sign up, you’ll have to wait for a confirmation email before you get started. Just a warning for those of you using Hotmail — I signed up using a Hotmail account and it took FOREVER to receive the email. You may want to use an email account from another service if you don’t feel like waiting around for the email. I ran out of patience waiting, and signed up again with a Gmail account and received the email right away.

The whole central idea behind doof is games. All of their games are divided into categories that include action, arcade, card, puzzle, racing, shooting, sports, strategy, and word. You can play the games by yourself, or you can compete with others. While they’ve got plenty of categories to choose from, some of the categories don’t have many games in them.  For example, the card section only has two games – Solitaire and Klondike. This is one of the only downsides of this service that I came across, and given that they recently launched, I assume they’ll be adding more games in the future.

Of course there is a whole social aspect to the site which includes allowing users to add friends and talk to them via a messenger service, or send them a message.  Each user creates a profile and can add an image, write a little something about themselves, and send gifts. Much like Facebook, there’s a “wall” where people can leave you messages, and you can “send a tickle” which reminded me of Facebook’s “Poke.” Much of the interface on Doof can be customized to your liking including the option to change the color of each of the windows.

If you like playing games online and competing with others, definitely give Doof a shot and let us know what you think.