A few times a year, Xbox or another sponsor offers “gold weekends” that allow you to try out all the advantages of a Gold membership to see if you’d like to upgrade. There are a lot of advantages to upgrading, including sneak peeks at new games and exclusive downloads. You also gain the ability to video chat with people around the globe, share photos, invite your friends to Xbox LIVE parties and enjoy Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. If you’re already a Netflix member you’ll be able to access their streaming library of movies and TV shows.