Virb

Now I may not be that much into social networking sites, at least not most of them. I do really like last.fm. Either way, Virb is a new social networking site in the MySpace/Facebook category. It, however, is a much better way to experience content. First, it looks great; very clean and simple. Secondly, all the content is easy to get to, and on top of that, easy to ignore. Music does not start automatically, and video and photos are well laid out, kind of a bare-bones Flickr. You can even embed Flickr photos into your Virb account, or Youtube and various other sites. One thing I really like is that bands can post a discography section, and each album has a separate page where you can play tracks, check album art and etc.

I hope tons of bands join this site, because I feel it's a better way to check out a group than MySpace. Virb doesn't have nearly the numbers of MySpace, of course, and the website isn't 100% done yet, but I think most people would prefer Virb over MySpace on the content front. As far as social networking goes, I'm not sure. It looks pretty close to MySpace on that front, which seems like a bad idea to me. People really like Facebook because you can exclude people. Virb is still growing, and I think if they add that feature, and the buzz gets around, this might be the next big social networking site.

Here's a link to the Bloc Party Virb page, because I think it's a good example of people customizing pages, and Virb looking very pleasant.

Bloc Party Virb