Who's coming with me?

March 9, 2007 4:02 PM

WHAT? No post about VIRB yet? Myspace meets AJAX and a sleek "2.0" design. Allows bands to upload albums instead of a measely 4 songs. Real purdy like y'all.
posted by Satapher (58 comments total)

I was all ready to poo-poo yet another Myspace clone, but goddamn, I have to say that is one great looking site. Even the profiles look great.

It's like myspace, if they actually had some designers on staff. I'm going to have to steal one of those templates for my blog.
posted by mathowie at 4:06 PM on March 9, 2007

One cool idea I saw they have is that you can turn off people's profile customizations if you want. Imagine if myspace made than an option.
posted by cell divide at 4:06 PM on March 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

simplebits gave it a thumbs up so i knew it was gonna be good
posted by Satapher at 4:07 PM on March 9, 2007

Recent hotness is coming soon. Should be awesome.
posted by davebush at 4:07 PM on March 9, 2007

I already signed up there yesterday and I encourage all you myspacers to do the same. Let the exodus begin.
posted by mullingitover at 4:08 PM on March 9, 2007

Black text on white! So professional!
posted by Plutor at 4:12 PM on March 9, 2007

So practical!
posted by Satapher at 4:13 PM on March 9, 2007

I just got an invite last night and am so ready to make that jump. Absolutely ace-looking site.
posted by one.louder.ash! at 4:13 PM on March 9, 2007

it lauched yesterday! sign ups are officially open
posted by Satapher at 4:15 PM on March 9, 2007

Can I insert my own crappy CSS?
posted by Artw at 4:16 PM on March 9, 2007

Ick. The column headers each contain words like "hot", "fresh", "buzz", and "get your --- on".

And please make that man on the front page stop looking at me.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:16 PM on March 9, 2007

Of course Artw! empty your mind!
posted by Satapher at 4:18 PM on March 9, 2007

It is quite pretty, in a rather anonymous 2.0 type way. Can't really see mcuh else on first glance that really seperates it form it's competition, except maybe some minimal JS helping the interface along.
posted by Artw at 4:22 PM on March 9, 2007

Well, it's better design than myspace, but my butt has better design than myspace. Clearly design is not the problem.
posted by roll truck roll at 4:32 PM on March 9, 2007

Yeah, the pictures look nice because they're, for the most part, professional bands that have signed up right now (with professional photographers taking professional pictures). Look at the comments from the "normals" and you start to see the same crappy MySpace shots all over again.

Besides a really large (like, half the page) header, what exactly is so cool about this site?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:45 PM on March 9, 2007

Civil_Disobedient writes "Besides a really large (like, half the page) header, what exactly is so cool about this site?"

It plays nice with flickr.

It's easier to customize your page without creating something that makes your eyes bleed.

It has a convenient "remove customization" button.

Happy? Now everybody sign up and let's load test it!
posted by mullingitover at 4:48 PM on March 9, 2007

>> what exactly is so cool about this site?

Nothing at all! Its about as cool as you want it to be. Try it out for 10 minutes and see if you change your mind

and yes! people you don't think are hip are free to sign up too!
posted by Satapher at 4:49 PM on March 9, 2007

What's with the tag cloud fading away to invisible? Maybe it looks better on a PC or something, but on a Mac, it's a pretty sucky design idea.
posted by willnot at 4:51 PM on March 9, 2007

I just signed up to ensure a low user id, if this ever takes off. There don't appear to be user ids.
posted by Bugg at 4:55 PM on March 9, 2007

dont forget the VirbTunes iTunes plug-in
posted by Satapher at 4:58 PM on March 9, 2007

Let the myspace exodus begin!
posted by empath at 4:58 PM on March 9, 2007

Satapher: There are a million myspace clones (and actually, myspace was a clone of friendster).

The site itself is very pretty, but I think many people are actually turned off by design that's too good, they feel like it's too cool and there not "real".
posted by delmoi at 5:06 PM on March 9, 2007

I smell something Self Linkish. Someone do some digging and get back to me.
posted by wheelieman at 5:22 PM on March 9, 2007

I uploaded an mp3 but it won't play.
posted by empath at 5:31 PM on March 9, 2007

holy fuck, almost everything in this thread reads like the homeowner's guide to shilling a social networking site.
posted by shmegegge at 5:36 PM on March 9, 2007

I have no idea what the hell this is about, but baby monkeys sure are cute.

Good looking site too.
posted by quin at 5:47 PM on March 9, 2007

I work for no one. I have an account and thats as far as it goes. Who knows--maybe I have a knack for signing up for sweet websites ;)
posted by Satapher at 5:48 PM on March 9, 2007

It's broken at the moment I think. I'm not receiving my "confirmation email".
posted by Liv Pooleside at 6:01 PM on March 9, 2007

I work for no one.

That just makes it all the more tragic.
posted by ryanrs at 6:03 PM on March 9, 2007

holy fuck, almost everything in this thread reads like the homeowner's guide to shilling a social networking site.

No Kidding.
posted by delmoi at 6:07 PM on March 9, 2007

I like my MySpace profile.

*waits for stone throwing and the like*
posted by liquorice at 6:08 PM on March 9, 2007

Does signing up as a regular user have any advantages over signing up as a musician?
posted by danb at 6:11 PM on March 9, 2007

It's Pepsi Blue.0!

like regular pepsi but with an rss feed
posted by spiderwire at 6:39 PM on March 9, 2007

Civil_Disobedient: "Besides a really large (like, half the page) header, what exactly is so cool about this site?"

The header is actually pretty small. Do you mean the featured page? Well, one thing that's cool is that it's not a real link. It's goddamn flash. I can't open it in a new window/tab.

And the ad in the footer lead me to this gem.
posted by Plutor at 6:48 PM on March 9, 2007

Virb: it's what you do.
posted by SPrintF at 6:59 PM on March 9, 2007

Bonus points for the Office Space error message.
posted by carsonb at 7:14 PM on March 9, 2007

VIRB IS BLOGS

This page has been prepped, properly anesthetized and is currently undergoing major reconstructive surgery.
Believe you me - there will be lots of radical and amazing things here soon.

VIRB is "Under Construction, 2.0"
posted by Robert Angelo at 7:18 PM on March 9, 2007

I sure hope it has a sparkley GIF filter.
posted by sourwookie at 7:31 PM on March 9, 2007

It's easier to customize your page without creating something that makes your eyes bleed.


I don't know about this. I saw this on Digg yesterday and signed up and played around for a bit. I imagine that people can do just about any kind of shitty thing they want to with their custom modules just like they can on MySpace.

I doubt that many people will leave MySpace to go to Virb. I think people who don't like MySpace and who have never had a profile on there will be the most likely candidates for Virbhood.
posted by inconsequentialist at 7:43 PM on March 9, 2007

I don't like any of these kinds of social sites because whenever I create a profile no one ever wants to be my friend, so my page sits there, alone and unseen. The dark matter of the internet.

But I would create the profile and mark my interests, diligently tagging and listing and ranking, and I would write funny things and watch and wait for people to come and like me. I am nothing if not patient, and when I was a shy little child standing by the edge of my neighborhood pond and wanted a friend to play boats and chase the ducks with me mom always said good things come to those who wait. So I wait and wait. My waiting punctuated only by the occasional page refresh. But it never changes. No one clicks me.

"What if you built a website and no one came?" they would say. And they would look at my profile and all those empty divs. And they'd laugh because in my profile all my friends are be placeholder jpgs in silhouette.

Surely someone would come, eventually. They must. I have the same interests as others, we have things in common, things we share. Aren't I just like everyone else in some unique way? So I would wait, but nothing would change.

But as I got older and computers grew smaller still no one came. No one clicks me, no one likes me. I am an old man now, and spend my days one after another after another sitting by the pond feeding the ducks and reflecting back on my life and all the interesting things I had to say that no one heard because I went my whole life unfriended.

And as still more years passed and I grew more frail I would realize that in truth I had nothing interesting to say. I am not like everyone else, not the same in some special way. I am unlike anyone else. I am not special, I am not compatible, I am not loved.

I would look at the ducks and see their family and see the happiness that could have been found in simple things, had I not been waiting for the friends I never made.

My profile, showing a handsome young man in the prime of his youth, is decades old, untouched an unedited. No one has seen it. Does it even exist? Did it ever? Did I?

And then one day my phone would chirp and I would check my profile and see that I had a new friend. My First Friend. This Friend looked so happy and vibrant in their picture that my heart would break with joy and I would feel young again because on the web there is no age or arthritis, no twilight, just our ideas. I knew that even as an old man the few years I had left would be spent in the virtual company of my First Friend and all the other friends who would surely follow in his wake. The days would be filled with love and chatter and kindness and tears and more life than an old man could take.

Another chirp. My new friend leaving his first comment! "Sorry man, I thought you were someone else" and then he is gone and they are all gone and my future full of friendship collapses back to the desert of me. I look agape at my profile whose pristine emptiness is blemished only by that comment, that network traffic accident of a once and momentary friend and in that moment I realize what my profile is to the web and what I am to the world - the thing you bump into on your way to someone else. My greatest conversations with my fellow man are "excuse me" and "sorry didn't see you there". Humanity has passed me by. It has moved on. But I'm left behind.

My top eight is empty. I am empty. I have spent my life inside my head, and I have come to loathe me.

And only then will I realize my life was more than an infinite series of page refreshes. Standing there by the pond that was home to that little boy and the ducks who have themselves moved on, I delete my profile, and vanish from the virtual world.

I will be an old man then. But I will have a warm coat on my back and bread in my pocket. And I will walk. I will walk the hills and the highways and the untread miles. I will walk on past it all, past the shyness and the loneliness, past the what-ifs and could-have-beens.

I will be old but my eyes will work and my mind will work, and I will walk and I will see what I will see.

Me alone. With no friends but the new rays of an ancient sun.
posted by Pastabagel at 8:41 PM on March 9, 2007 [12 favorites]

I'll be your friend.





On second thought, never mind.
posted by tighttrousers at 8:56 PM on March 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Hate me if you must, but I'm sticking with my LJ. Sorry, I think it has the best social organization, even though they've gone to shit with 6A.

And all my friends who left to "myspace"? Yeah. They always come back. Something tells me this won't be any different. Hell, even LJ users who signed up to Vox are still around (and this Virb reminds me a whole lot of Vox) I seriously couldn't spend more than a few minutes on Virb. ugh.

And ditto on the Pepsi-Blue/Self-Link filter...
posted by symbioid at 9:01 PM on March 9, 2007

But that monkey is damned cute. :)
posted by symbioid at 9:01 PM on March 9, 2007

I found this awesome new social network site, called localhost.
posted by davejay at 9:09 PM on March 9, 2007

Looks like those emo kids found it first.
posted by spiderskull at 10:16 PM on March 9, 2007

It always seems to me if these people would cultivate a few friends in real life they'd have someone take their picture and they wouldn't always have to hold the cameraphone at arm's length.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:19 PM on March 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yeah, so I gave it a try. Clicky. Except it's empty. Woe.
posted by liquorice at 10:39 PM on March 9, 2007

Alright. Here I am. I'm even a "band."
posted by roll truck roll at 11:38 PM on March 9, 2007

The mp3s don't play immediately once you upload them, it's true, but a few hours later they seem to work fine.

However, once I logged out, it "lost" my e-mail address and swore I had never been there before, so now I can't even get back into my account. An e-mail sent to the debugger e-mal gets an autobounce reply saying "we have no way to respond to all of our e-mails, so we'll take your thoughts into consideration! Bye!"

Not. Happy.
posted by mykescipark at 6:35 AM on March 10, 2007

However, once I logged out, it "lost" my e-mail address and swore I had never been there before, so now I can't even get back into my account.

Experiencing the same tremendous service. Guys, preventing me from filling out my profile in the early, ill-advised rush to try your site out is not the preferred dance move.
posted by cortex at 8:25 AM on March 10, 2007

Well, if nothing else, it's always interesting to see how these social networking sites evolve over time.

(*puts on his anthropologist's helmet, grabs his butterfly net, enters the portal*)
posted by Quiplash at 8:43 AM on March 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

Is this another place my fat, middle-aged ass can try to get in touch with hot young chicks?

(Just asking as a thought experiment.)

[e-mail]
posted by maxwelton at 10:53 AM on March 10, 2007

Someone used CSS to make a Virb page that looks like a MySpace page. Even that looks better than a real MySpace page.
posted by evilangela at 2:39 PM on March 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

(*puts on his anthropologist's helmet, grabs his butterfly net, enters the portal*)

Portal?

Like Stargate?
posted by spiderwire at 5:23 PM on March 10, 2007

Asoboo.com is cool too, especially if you live in Japan.
posted by ejoey at 7:03 AM on March 11, 2007

Any site that has success alerts like "Booyah!" is all right by me.
posted by jimfl at 10:38 AM on March 11, 2007

http://my.barackobama.com/ <-- weirdly fully featured.
posted by Artw at 1:11 PM on March 11, 2007

I think many people are actually turned off by design that's too good, they feel like it's too cool and there not

yah, every time I use Gmail I start to feel a little overwhelmed with its simplicity and wish i could go just back to being a normal person using Yahoo! Mail circa 1998
posted by Satapher at 6:58 PM on March 11, 2007