There aren’t many Microsoft projects that come off as cool as Popfly, but there are a few others that may bring your spirits up if you feel somewhat disappointed by this terrible news.

If you’re looking into creating your own social network, you should really check out NING. NING is a social network for building social networks. Simple-yet-confusing right? NING allows you to build a social network (complete) within the social network itself. For a small price, you can isolate your social network form the rest of the NING group, and attach your own domain.

For those of you stuck on a gaming social network, there’s a couple of options. For one, Raptr. Raptr is a social network, and a gamer collaboration tool. It allows gamers (for PC and consoles) to connect, share info, chat, and find other people who play their games. It alerts you about new achievments, and the network is still growing.

Another cool network is a gaming social media network called WeGame. The network is very cool. You can create your own gaming videos, machinima, screenshots etc, upload and share. There is a rank and achievement system, but no one’s sure what it’s there for site is cool enough. And if you’re not psyched about it yet, they have their own PC game recording client. The WeGame client allows you to capture (realtime) video of your PC games with full audio, and of course, screenshots. The client uploads the videos for you on the spot.

Microsoft has some interesting bits of software that may help you suppliment your addiction to other social networks by easily allowing you to set up your own. The Microsoft Web Platform Installer will customize and install a massive assortment of various server software plugins, web applications and assorted other goodies.

If you’re interested in creating your own XBOX games, check out Microsoft XNA and Microsoft Kodu (very cool this one).

If you know of a very cool gaming app or social network, let us know and we’ll add it to this post.