Xbox Live Nation, a site aimed at creating Xbox Live related programming standards, researching innovative community services, beta testing applications and services and promoting Xbox Live community, has built a feature into their site that allows gamers to integrate their in-game status with Twitter.

Xbox Live Nation Makes Tweeting Live Statuses Easy

I’d heard about a developer or two building a plugin that could be installed on your Xbox 360 that would create this bridge for you, but the XLN integration makes it eerily simple. Once you’ve connected your gamertag to the XLN website, just hit the Twitter integration page and throw in your Twitter credentials.

Don’t worry about these guys using your password for authentication, as the site is run by official Xbox.com Community Developers who adhere to a strict code of ethics (governed and monitored by Microsoft), which means your data ought to be safe, plus they are doing things like any other Twitter app that exists today.

Choose How Often to Tweet Your Live Status

XLN offers you two options for the type of update you’ll be sending:

1. standard integration (one entry per game)
2. high frequency integration (multiple entries per game)

Judging by the way “Xbox Live Nation” is trending on Twitter Search, people are either using the high frequency option or there are just a lot of Xbox Live gamers who are also using Twitter.

The XLN integration page also offers a freeform text box where you can post one-off messages directly to Twitter, though it looks as if they are using the API to perform the function, as the resulting tweets show that they are coming from the web.

Twitter Has Been Introduced to an Entirely Different Audience

I started playing on Xbox Live well before I knew what Twitter was, and only because I was involved in social media and blogging do I feel I really became aware of what it was. Had it not been for that involvement, I may never have found Twitter simply by playing video games. XLN does a decent job of explaining to users what Twitter is, but it’s hard to say whether or not those users have found any value in it outside of seeing their statuses posted there.

Twitter.com is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. [via Xbox Live Nation]

Will Microblogging Catch on with Gamers?

By clicking through to some of the users I found in the Twitter Search query, it looks like most of the users have only been using Twitter to post their statuses and not using it outside of that. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it will be interesting to see if the microblogging concept really catches on with these gamers.

I think it would be very cool to see microblogging replace the online messaging system built in to Xbox Live and have all of those messages be public, just like on Twitter, but still give users the ability to send direct messages as well.

I’ve hooked up my Xbox Live gamertag to Twitter now, so you should start seeing a few status messages being posted. We’ll see how things go.

Feel free to friend me on Xbox Live (miketempleton) and maybe we can meet up for a game or two between tweets.