Virb's blog import feature is now live.

This afternoon Virb updated their system, and now you can import your existing blog (e.g., Myspace, LiveJournal, Vox, Blogger, Wordpress, Xanga...whatever) and it will show up on Virb. Details are here, and you can watch a screencast for a demonstration.

I think this is a pretty great feature. Myspace and Friendster both force you to use their blogs, so Virb joins Facebook as one of the only big social networks to allow you to import your existing blog. It's certainly better than forcing users to maintain separate blogs to communicate with different sets of pals.

Naturally the feature isn't perfect. When I imported my blog, most of the posts looked funny (probably because of the way Vox formats their feeds). Virb is aware of the issue, though and they're working on it:

We are aware of the issues with some styling with HTML elements within the blogs as well as special characters being turned into boxes. We're working on this now.

Virb is working on some additional features that are going to make the site even more useful and compelling. You should check out their new blog if you're into geeky stuff like that.

Finally, I'd like to point out that Virb has remedied a lot of the complaints I talked about here. I'm not suggesting they listened to me, but they're listening to someone, and I think that's great.