There’s been a lot of talk around the new social networking service Virb.com lately, and for good reason. Virb.com is much more than MySpace ever was, or ever could hope to be. Virb breaks through the constraints of social networking and brings everything (music, movies, photos, blogging, and design) together in an easy to use package.
Virb is a new, but long awaited product from Unborn Media, the people behind popular music networking service PureVolume. While they’re not really known as social networking giants like MySpace, they are known for their beautiful designs and the amazing features that come with them, thanks in part to the Neubix team. While Virb is overall an amazing feat both from a UI Design perspective and from a basic user experience perspective, there are a few features that really stand out to me.
Virb Music / VirbTunes
As far as music goes, Virb is definitely on the top of my list for networking services. While Unborn hasn’t fully linked Purevolume with Virb, a feature many expect to see, they have borrowed the popular PV Music Player for Band Pages, allowing users to add songs and even create their own playlists. Above I’d compiled a simple playlist of my favorite music, easily organizable with a drag and drop interface. The first three songs on your playlist are automatically displayed on your profile, something MySpace has failed to incorporate, even years after its inception.
Another nifty music feature is VirbTunes, an Audioscrobbler like iTunes plugin that pulls information like your most frequently played songs, artists, and more, and displays that information on your Virb profile for everyone to see. But what if you don’t want this to be shown? Well, Virb makes it easy to redesign and reorganize your profile, so that’s no problem at all.
Virb Design Builder
For those of you familiar with the MySpace setup, you know how difficult it is to edit the look of your already unnatractive profile. You’re forced to copy and paste jarbled CSS into sections you’ve never even heard of, bringing your profile to a browser-crashing, unreadable low. Fortunately for the Virb users, Unborn has integrated a profile editor that’s both attractive and easy to use.
The editor makes use of the ColourMod application for color selection, and that’s pretty much it. It’s as easy as that. Choose your colors, and maybe change your fonts around, and the live preview window will show you exactly what’s been changed. This is probably my favorite feature of all, and I know it will save a lot of the non design savvy users a ton of time.
The Virb Dashboard / Your Home
Again, MySpace has been beaten when it comes to good design. The MySpace dashboard is bloated and covered with ads, forcing you to scroll down just to see if you have new messages or comments. In Virb’s case, everything is presented towards the top of the page with virtually no need for scrolling. Recent updates fromy our friends are displayed in a neat box with some nice AJAX hover effects, with Announcements, the equivalent of bulletins, displayed below that. The difference, you can now leave comments on bulletins.
To the left of that is your basic information box, informing you of new messages, comments, or friend requests, with a small amount of unobtrusive AdSense Ads below that, and finally your profile stats appear below that. Everything is, once again, easy on the eyes.
Now, as a final note, Virb is still in Beta mode, so things may load slow, or not work at all. I was also planning on covering the excellent photo organizing features, but time has not permitted me to do so. Either way, enjoy and make sure to check out Virb as soon as you can.
Can’t wait to try out this service. Just waiting on that invite :P
In all seriousness, I’m very glad to here that one of these services is offering something usable in terms of actually customizing your page. Can’t wait for the rest of your review.
I have a few invitations so if you want a invitation just email me at marko@mcville.net with subject virb invitation ;)
@Marko: thanks for the offer, I’m sure you’ll get some requests, pretty soon. And I’ll make sure to look you up on Virb and send you a friend request. It feels so good to use those words without having to think about MySpace.
Very comprehensive review, ’twas a great read. I too am really enjoying Virb — thanks so much for the invite :)
Very nice review! I love Virb a lot. I was initially scared that it would become something like MySpace, but now I’m pleasantly surprised. There’s a lot of room for creativity and customization without going overboard, as MySpace does. It’s also relatively easy to change things and display them however you want. All in all, I might actually use it. Scary, huh :)
Nice review on Virb. I’ve been on there almost a month now, and I can’t seem to get enough of it. I think the part I like the most are the groups; They’re not as atrocious as Myspace’s groups, and instead of a text link, you can have the pretty little avatar up :)
I’d like one of those invitations.
Has anybody got a spare?
Post your E-Mail @ nonsense..
i work for a nonprofit that does work on the genocide in darfur, and we’re trying to figure out if we should get a profile up here (like we do on myspace and facebook) … if you have any invites left i’d love to be able to test it out for them. ivan at quixoticlife dot net.
I’d love an invite:
chumpychumpchump at gmail.
Thanks!
id love an invite please meetmrtrigger@hotmail.com
I’d love an invitation if you have any left. My email address is contact(at)ashleymorgan.com. Thanks.
If anyone has an invite they wouldn’t mind parting with, shoot one over to me please: shawn.lockheart(a)gmail.com — Thanks :)
Sounds amazing. Allow me to join the list of people looking for an invite:
eric.osborn[at]hotmail.com
Thanks much. :)
Let me be the first to update the thread that Virb.com just launched open registration as of yesterday. This thing is awesome!
[...] and configurable. Too early to tell if it will give the “que feo” Myspace a run. Read more and find me. [...]
I have 15 Virb invites, email me at evan.isaac.r@gmail.com if you want then with the subject as “Virb”. I love Virb, it is without a doubt better than myspace, except because its not popular enough there arent that many artists on the site, there arent that many people that are on it, but it still is only in beta testing and will hopfully come out soon. Its got potential, they just just need the social “kick”
I love me some virb, excellent review.
WOW, nice review. It’s got some of the best pictures round to support it as well.
The thing i like about Virb is that they focus on making new stuff before they make all the boring stuff. Like the blog importer that they just recently ported out.
I also like the fact that your can really customise your profiles up, that’s why i made VirbRocks.com…
Excellent review. I agree with you that the basic design tool is better than myspace layouts… I just would like to see an banner uploader for the top of your profile, but that’s it…
.Leon