Social gaming is a popular concept. It is a way to engage in playing online games and socially interacting with other gamers who are interested in the same game. With over 5 million users participating in the online interaction, leaders in the gaming industry are experiencing a rise in business and an overall interest in the release of new games. One of the newest gaming start-ups recently raised over $15 million in funding to help further its business goals. The online social gamers, Raptr, has raised over $27 million to date, with joint ventures with Tenaya Capital and Accel Partners participating in the funds roundup.

Raptr’s approach to online gaming and social interacting is two-fold: they want to encourage gamers to socially connect and they want to also give gamers the opportunity to track their gaming progress and share it with their network. By doing these two things, they hope to keep users on their site and to encourage competitive interaction between players, which will increase interest and more interaction.

The social gaming site has over 6 million registered members, and accumulated those members in less than a year. Less than one year ago in July 2010, the site slightly had over one million members and has been able to grow five times that number in a short amount of time. Although the gaming site is an independent standalone, the new funding will allow the site to further increase its exposure and to develop more games for its users. Its competitors, Zynga and Playdom, are connected more with Facebook, therefore those social gamers have immediate access to those platforms. Raptr hopes to outweigh the competition with more sophisticated, engaging games and offer more opportunities for social interactions as gamers chat online and play the games together via the Web.