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 morePart social network and part 3D virtual world, Kaneva also throws in a dash of YouTube, with media sharing for pictures and Flash video. I received news of the service today, but Kaneva has been kicking about since late 2004. Essentially you begin with a standard social-network profile, then earn prestige points to work your way up a site leaderboard until you're invited to join the 3D social world, which launched its beta in April of last year.
Points are given as rewards for adding content to your profile and interacting with other Keneva members. Once you join the 3D world (which looks quite similar to The Sims and Second Life), you can hang out (virtually) with other Kaneva users and even interact with each other's shared media, which can be ported into the 3D world.
As a social networking site, Kaneva is very similar to MySpace, with preset profile themes akin to Trig (covered last month). It's got all the usual bells and whistles, with friend requests, comments, embeddable widgets, and interservice e-mail. What's a little creepy is how many friend requests and "raves" (basically personal Diggs) I got within mere hours of signing up with Kaneva. There are over 100,000 Kaneva users, and without having even a dab of content on my profile I had received 16 comments and a dozen friend requests--more than my Facebook profile has received in several weeks. Either people are madly attempting to spam new profiles to get invites to the 3D app, or there's just an active, friendly community. Based on the terseness of the rave comments, my guess is the former.
As for the 3D app itself, it's free (for now), Windows-only, and requires a fairly speedy processor with 3D acceleration. The combination of the virtual world with your real-life profile is interesting, but I can't help but think some people without capable PCs are going to feel a little left out just using the profile service.
Kaneva seems like a bold move, attempting to forge one community with what is essentially two completely different services, but people seem to be using it. Whether it will "turn" Second Life and MySpace users is questionable, but for now, blending the two services looks to be Kaneva's biggest draw.
Trig is a new social-networking site based out of Sweden that's aiming to steal you away from MySpace with its devastatingly good looks and indie branding. Trig has a gorgeous welcome page. It first caught my eye when I saw it featured on The Museum of Modern Betas. It seemed to have everything MySpace did (and more), but with a unmistakable visual appeal. I was hoping the actual site would have a similar luster, but Web sites (like books) can't be judged on outside appearances alone, and Trig is unfortunately proof of this.
Trig profiles are easy on the eyes
(Credit: CNET Networks)Trig is a work in progress, with a few nice social-networking features that have a lot of potential. It's easy to skin your profile: instead of coming up with complex HTML code that needs to be stuck in certain parts of your profile (I'm looking at you, MySpace), there are a dozen skins to choose from that are similar in quality to what you'd find on a blogging service such as Wordpress. What you get in quality you lose in the customization, though, which is a problem in this category.
Another nice feature is a photo gallery with 100MB of space for each user. Similar to Facebook and Flickr, you can tag and set privacy levels for each photo. Trig uses a photo-editing system similar to Flickr's, making it easy to rename and add captions to photos in your gallery just by clicking on the text. Photos can be stuck into profile comments, blogs, or personal messages and then resized easily just by drag-clicking the corners. It's a nice touch and very intuitive.
Trig dips into the social-bookmarking scene with the ability to "Trig" things. Trigging someone's profile, personal blog, or pictures adds to his or her total Trig count. If your profile gets enough Trigs, you'll be featured on Trig's front page. You can also see who has recently looked at your page, which admittedly is a bit creepy from a privacy standpoint, but interesting for the profile owner. Stalkers can turn this feature off and look at people's profiles without them knowing.
Most of the profiles with the highest Trig count are half-naked female models or Trig staff members. It will be interesting to see how this model scales with more users, and whether clothed people can make the top 10.
Trig's profile skin chooser
(Credit: CNET Networks)Trig's profile management needs work. There are a lot of options in one place, but it's not always easy to see areas that need attention, such as your message in-box or friend requests. I'd like to see a system similar to Facebook's, where new notifications show up on a sidebar. Luckily, there are RSS notification feeds you can subscribe to for both comments and new Trig counts, but that means venturing outside the site for your news.
Despite its innovations, Trig doesn't make me want to venture away from MySpace or Facebook. I don't think any of my friends will want to leave either. MySpace has music. Facebook has my classmates. And more importantly, they both have a ton of users.
Trig doesn't seem to have an identity yet. There are a lot of neat things Trig is doing, but not one of them is a cohesive feel or purpose that brings it together in a way that draws me in and keeps me there. If Trig could create a user experience that matches the beauty and simplicity of its welcome page, along with an easy way for a niche community to come together, I think Trig could create a draw for changing social networks. In the meantime, it's just not enough.
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