217w ago - When the PlayStation Network launched in 2006, many saw it as a sea of untapped potential, but Jon Webb from the SCEA Developer Support Group says Sony's made strides to correct that and that now it's up to developers to capitalize.

Webb spoke today at GDC about the PSN's past, present, and future. While a lot of the discussion focused on the nuts and bolts of running the service for the 20 million registered users, Webb did talk about all the improvements the company added to the PSN last year.

Sure, a lot of lip service was paid to Trophies and the in-game cross media bar, but Webb said there are a wealth of other options the late '08 upgrade added that developers didn't drop into their games because of time constraints; the PSN booster shot came about halfway through the year and that didn't bode well for adding functionality to the holiday releases.

What beauts are hiding under the PS3's hood? Well, Webb says the PSN currently supports voting systems, integration of external media sources from the web (He mentioned pulling Twitter photos into a game.), location-specific information based on your IP, group functions such as clubs and club challenges, and in-game ads.

Web also detailed the ability for drop "socially based commerce recommendations" into games so that...