friendster

Virb is a new social network launched yesterday by the same people who created indie-band publicity site PureVolume. Virb has been in private beta since late last year and is now open for anyone to join. Similar to most new social networks these days, Virb has a clean and slick look, quite contrary to social networking juggernaut MySpace. Virb is gunning to be the do-it-all network. Where MySpace focuses on music, Virb does that, but tacks on group sections for photography, fashion, sports, and writing too. The problem is that both the site and the content aren't there yet.

Similar to Trig, which I wrote about in January, Virb promises to provide everything to everyone without fulfilling a way to do it. It's the "if you build it, they will come" mentality that's not necessarily a bad thing to have with a social network, just disparaging when you click on a link with no content on the other end. As it stands, clicking on many of Virb's group areas takes you to a placeholder page. The two sections that are up as of me writing this are music and videos. Both of these sections work well and have some really great content--music in particular, which has themed band pages with downloadable tracks that look more like something on the iTunes Store than a social network. The team definitely pulled some design cues from Purevolume, but that's a good thing.… Read more