Virb, the latest breed of social network officially launched yesterday. With clean lines and a certain amount of hype could Virb be the future of social networking?
I have been looking at Virb in some more depth through the beta phase recently. I am a sucka for well designed sites, and Virb fits nicely into this criteria. Certainly Virb offers an awful lot for the designer in us all and has been developed from the ground up with this in mind. Complete customization of the front and backend like this, has not been seen before in popular social network and should encourage many people originally put off by the blinding customizations popular in MySpace. Structured ‘Modules’ incorporating content from third partied like YouTube and Odeo can be created and placed in your profile and as a user you have control over the html and CSS – heaven! No more div overlays!
Conversely, most social networks downfall, the ‘MySpace design effect’, is alleviated in Virb with the simplest solutions; a ‘remove customization’ button prominently placed in the header. Clicking this button restores the original, clean, simple and most importantly neutral default theme that ‘ships’ with each new profile and is remembered when you return to the profile.
Labeled by Christina Marie, “MySpace for Grownups”, Virb certainly fits the bill. With de-facto social networking features and advanced abilities to come like importing blog posts via RSS, Virb has done an awful lot right.
So where does it fit in? My thinking is that currently the MySpace monolith might be too big at the moment but in the future there are going to be a lot of existing users from Facebook and Bebo that may move as the site snowballs. One thing I am sure about is that there is space for a mature social network in this crowded marketplace. Vox, the closed social network or social blogging platform, had better watch out.
