The world’s most popular broadband bandwidth speed testing network is getting on the social bandwagon, starting Monday.

Speedtest.net, which had 165 million unique users in 2010, is now offering a way for users to sign up, save their results, share them with friends, create shared tests, and even win badges.

Doug Suttles, the founder of Ookla, the service’s parent company, said he resisted the idea for a long time, arguing that as a utility there was no need to have a login system.

“Users strong-armed us into it,” Suttles said. “But we did add it and with good reason. Users can now log in, and they don’t lose their history if they get a new computer or clear their cookies.”

The service will still allow unregistered users to test their cable, DSL, and 3G connections, but registered users can combine results from different devices and locations. They can also easily share their results and history by publishing them on the web. So for instance, a user who starts to have a problem with their connection can send a link to their ISP to show them that they are experiencing a new drop in speed.

That’s useful because ISPs trust Speedtest.net, according to Suttles, in no small part because many of them power their own broadband testing systems using a white-label version of Speedtest.net.

Registered users can also create a “wave,” which is essentially a group that lets people share results. So if an office adds WiFi, employees can all test the new connection and have their results show up in a shared view.

Suttles suggests there’s even bigger uses for that kind of collaboration.

“If a city council wanted to collect broadband info on their community, they could create a wave for the city, and all the results are crunched in real time,” Suttles said. (If that sounds suspiciously close to the FCC’s attempt to collect broadband data nationally, it should — Suttles says he offered to hand that data to the FCC for free, to no avail.)

And then there’s vanity.

“People like to show off,” Suttles said, pointing to a recently popular Reddit thread where a visitor to a Korea showed off a wickedly fast connection. Each wave comes with “badges” that a user can win, including ones for the fastest and slowest speeds, as well as a “Happy Panda” badge for the most improved.

Suttles himself isn’t immune to the competitive aspect. When demoing the site to Wired, he showed a Wave that included a test from a Seattle Times reporter, who clocked in with 102 Mbps down and over 50 Mbps up, putting him clearly in first place. Suttles, who has a 100 Mbps Comcast connection at his house for testing purposes, ended the call, saying he was going to go post the high score.

Now, if only the rest of America had decently priced, super-fast connections to show off to their friends.

The world’s most popular broadband bandwidth speed testing network is getting on the social bandwagon, starting Monday.

Speedtest.net, which had 165 million unique users in 2010, is now offering a way for users to sign up, save their results, share them with friends, create shared tests, and even win badges.

The service will still allow unregistered users to test their cable, DSL, and 3G connections, but registered users can combine results from different devices and locations. They can also easily share their results and history by publishing them on the web. So for instance, a user who starts to have a problem with their connection can send a link to their ISP to show them that they are experiencing a new drop in speed.

That’s useful because ISPs trust Speedtest.net, according to Suttles, in no small part because many of them power their own broadband testing systems using a white-label version of Speedtest.net.

Registered users can also create a “wave,” which is essentially a group that lets people share results. So if an office adds Wi-Fi, employees can all test the new connection and have their results show up in a shared view.

Suttles suggests there’s even bigger uses for that kind of collaboration.

“If a city council wanted to collect broadband info on their community, they could create a wave for the city, and all the results are crunched in real time,” Suttles said. (If that sounds suspiciously close to the FCC’s attempt to collect broadband data nationally, it should — Suttles says he offered to hand that data to the FCC for free, to no avail.)

And then there’s vanity.

“People like to show off,” Suttles said, pointing to a recently popular Reddit thread where a visitor to a Korea showed off a wickedly fast connection. Each wave comes with “badges” that a user can win, including ones for the fastest and slowest speeds, as well as a “Happy Panda” badge for the most improved.

Suttles himself isn’t immune to the competitive aspect. When demoing the site to Wired, he showed a Wave that included a test from a Seattle Times reporter, who clocked in with 102 Mbps down and over 50 Mbps up, putting him clearly in first place. Suttles, who has a 100 Mbps Comcast connection at his house for testing purposes, ended the call, saying he was going to go post the high score.

Now, if only the rest of America had decently priced, super-fast connections to show off to their friends.

The world’s most popular broadband bandwidth speed testing network is getting on the social bandwagon, starting Monday.

Speedtest.net, which had 165 million unique users in 2010, is now offering a way for users to sign up, save their results, share them with friends, create shared tests, and even win badges.

Doug Suttles, the founder of Ookla, the service’s parent company, said he resisted the idea for a long time, arguing that as a utility there was no need to have a login system.

“Users strong-armed us into it,” Suttles said. “But we did add it and with good reason. Users can now log in, and they don’t lose their history if they get a new computer or clear their cookies.”

The service will still allow unregistered users to test their cable, DSL, and 3G connections, but registered users can combine results from different devices and locations. They can also easily share their results and history by publishing them on the web. So for instance, a user who starts to have a problem with their connection can send a link to their ISP to show them that they are experiencing a new drop in speed.

That’s useful because ISPs trust Speedtest.net, according to Suttles, in no small part because many of them power their own broadband testing systems using a white-label version of Speedtest.net.

Registered users can also create a “wave,” which is essentially a group that lets people share results. So if an office adds Wi-Fi, employees can all test the new connection and have their results show up in a shared view.

Suttles suggests there’s even bigger uses for that kind of collaboration.

“If a city council wanted to collect broadband info on their community, they could create a wave for the city, and all the results are crunched in real time,” Suttles said. (If that sounds suspiciously close to the FCC’s attempt to collect broadband data nationally, it should — Suttles says he offered to hand that data to the FCC for free, to no avail.)

And then there’s vanity.

“People like to show off,” Suttles said, pointing to a recently popular Reddit thread where a visitor to a Korea showed off a wickedly fast connection. Each wave comes with “badges” that a user can win, including ones for the fastest and slowest speeds, as well as a “Happy Panda” badge for the most improved.

Suttles himself isn’t immune to the competitive aspect. When demoing the site to Wired, he showed a Wave that included a test from a Seattle Times reporter, who clocked in with 102 Mbps down and over 50 Mbps up, putting him clearly in first place. Suttles, who has a 100 Mbps Comcast connection at his house for testing purposes, ended the call, saying he was going to go post the high score.

Now, if only the rest of America had decently priced, super-fast connections to show off to their friends.