On WashingtonPost.com, Michael Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) writes:

“WuChess, a partnership between Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and ChessPark, a social network around online chess playing, launches today. It’s the “world’s first online chess and hip hop community” and will also include exclusive videos and mp3 of the “hottest cats in hip hop.”

Like most people of inconsequential intelligent who grew up in the mid or late 90s, I celebrate the catalog of the RZA, the GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard (may he rest in peace), et al.

In the same vein, I think I speak for most of the these people when I say that if it comes down to paying $48 bucks a year I’m content to stick with playing Scrabulous on Facebook.

Can’t say I envy anyone trying to launch a niche social network these days.

RZA says he’ll donate a large part of the revenue to the Hip Hop Chess Federation. Adisa Banjoko (CEO, HHCF) posted on the HHCF blog that they are currently looking for donations and sponsorship to hold the second annual Chess Kings Invitational.

The RZA himself currently holds the title. check it out:

I’ve been all over a lot of these sports syndication sites recently. They’re a great aggregator for what is going on online in the sports universe. I ran a quick compete.com comparison with my top-3 (BallHype.com, Yardbarker.com, ArmChairGM.com):

Personally, I thought BallHype would come out on top. It is definitely the site where I see pages by the most influential sports bloggers. Interestingly enough, FanIQ.com also came in at just under 100,000 monthly uniques (placing it above BallHype as well).

I hope to have widgets for all my profile pages from these sites up on this site sooner rather than later.