3 posts tagged “social networking”

Virb

Virb is a new site that's competing with Myspace head on. That's right. They're not making widgets for you to put on Myspace. They're not giving you code to help you spruce up Myspace. Instead, they've built a new site from the ground up. Their ambition? To be a better Myspace (and Facebook and Last.fm). They don't just want to compete, they want to win.

They're not doing it piecemeal either. Today, they opened the site up to the public and nearly everything is working right now: fully customizable profile pages, video and photo sharing with generous upload limits, separate pages for bands (with beautiful flash players), interoperability with 3rd party widgets, blogs, and robust search functionality. A full list of features, including some that are coming soon, is available here.

I could write all day about this site, but I'll start small. Here are five things the company seems to have done right the first time, right out of the box. Note that I'm not going into much detail. That will have to come later, in future posts.

1. Perfect balance. Virb has managed to what many have thought impossible. Make a feature-rich, coherently-designed site that is also super customizable. They wanted to build a site that avoided much of the ugliness for which Myspace is notorious, and yet they knew people wouldn't accept a competitor that didn't let users tinker with their, uh, spaces. Well, Virb is gorgeous and "dripping with AJAX." It has a ton of features Myspace users have begged for, and yet it gives users considerable power and discretion in building their (much more) beautiful pages (e.g., here, here, here, & here).  That's not to say you can't still build an eyesore. But there's one more thing: Virb lets you "turn off customization" for individual pages when a pal has simply gone overboard in tricking out their page. Genius!
2. Plays well with others. First, you can sync with Flickr. Hallelujah on that alone. But that's not where it ends. They allow users to create custom modules, which retain the general size of the disparate modules on the site, but which also allow you to insert your own HTML code or third party widgets from approved sites (e.g., You Tube, Google, Brightcove, Revver, Vimeo, Odeo, Metacafe, Veoh). Like Myspace, they don't let users insert Javascript. But flash-based widgets seem to work okay. Finally, they're planning to let users import their own blogs via RSS. That feature isn't live yet, but it's hugely important if they want to attract new users weary of Myspace's "lock-in" mentality.
3. Not afraid to borrow ideas. Some of Virb's best features appear to be cribbed from other sites, and that's a very good thing. For example, Virbtunes is an iTunes plug-in that logs your tracks as you play them and posts them on your profile page. It works just like Last.fm. It doesn't have Last.fm's enormous feature set, but it's already smart enough to identify bands who have a Virb profile and provide an autolink to their page. Another useful feature comes from Facebook: after you log into Virb, your homepage displays your "recent friend activity." Whenever your friends add photos, videos, blogposts, or songs, a notification shows up on your homepage. It's very similar to Facebook's mini-feed, but it avoids some of the controversy that feature spawned. Virb doesn't tell you about interactions among friends.
   

   Recent Friend Activity
4. Media isn't an afterthought, it's Virb's central nervous system. Take a look at Virb's home page, and their pages for video and music. Everything about the site says it's built to run on media. That image transfers to the content and features on the site. Virb is going after Myspace's core competency in music. Hard. The site's founders, Unborn Media, previously brought you PureVolume, a kind of Web 2.0 version of MP3.com. Now, bands can get a Virb site that ports over a killer feature set from PureVolume. The resulting artist pages are so pretty, we're not sure PureVolume is even necessary anymore. Take a look at this page for Bloc Party, or this one for Finland's Day Eleven, and you'll see what I mean. A lot of bands are going to flock to Virb. Bands like The Decemberists, Mastodon, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, and The Hold Steady are already on Virb at launch. Users don't get left out. They can add as many as 15 songs from different artists to create their own custom player. And as for Video, Virb is the first site I've seen to launch WIDESCREEN video that can be embedded anywhere. And with the click of a button, you can dim the rest of the screen for maximum enjoyment. Are you starting to get amazed?
5. Search and you shall find. Virb makes it easy to find what you're looking for. Myspace veterans know that's not a small thing. Virb has a speedy search function that crawls the whole site and returns results in discrete categories (e.g., people, blogs, music, video). Tagging is actively encouraged, and damn near everything can be tagged, including your friends. This fixes one of my biggest complaints about Myspace: once you had about 200 friends or more, it became impossible to find them again. While Virb doesn't let you search your friends (yet), you can tag them any way you wish, and then filter them accordingly (e.g., work, school, home, golfing buddies). This is made easier by the fact that Virb allows you to keep Organizations and Bands separate from your "People" friends. This is what social media is all about: finding people, sharing information, and staying in touch.

I'm not saying Virb is perfect. They're still adding features and tweaking the service. It's still in beta for chrissakes. A massive influx of users could still crash their servers. And even if everything goes right, they've still got to overcome the significant network effects advantage Myspace enjoys. Are people really going to bother with another social network, when they've invested so much into Myspace? Who knows. But I like Virb a lot. And they've got a good unofficial motto that I'm going to adopt.

I'm moving to Virb. Who's coming with me?

P.S., I'm starting a new Virb group on Vox. If you like Virb, join up!

At ZDNet's Google Blog, Garret Rogers puzzles over some translation text for a mysterious Google service called "Fensi." He wonders whether it might be a wisp of confirmation for an earlier rumor/tip he received:

A few months ago I received an anonymous (and thus potentially unreliable) tip from a "Trusted Tester".  He told me of a service coming soon that he would only describe as a mix between "MySpace meets Microsoft Live".  I still don't know what that would be — maybe he was talking about Fensi?

I don't have any doubt that something like Myspace is forthcoming from Google. Although the myriad Google products seem to suffer from inconsistencies and and a scattershot lack of focus, the reality is there is sufficient uniformity amongst an axis of popular Google offerings to form a powerful back-end infrastructure for a social network. The obvious starting points are Google's enormously popular Gmail and Google Calendar services. Together, with Gmail's integrated chat, and the recently overhauled Google Groups, Google already has a few of the compelling synergies MySpace has been working to achieve. Namely, unified messaging, chat, and calendaring functions. With Google's PicasaWeb and Blogger properties, its burgeoning Office tools, and the YouTube/Google Video dynamo, Google certainly has the pieces of something that could be bigger.

I'm not suggesting Google is going to create a Myspace clone. What they produce will certainly be a Myspace competitor, but there's going to something else, something unexpected. I'm betting the something extra is going to be related to Google Domains & Google Apps.

Right now, any company or organization that signs up for Google Domains can issue each of their users a Gmail account, a calendar, and a personalized start page, all under their own domain name. Administrators can also create custom Web pages using Google Pages. Essentially, Google's saying to companies, universities, and other organizations, "We'll give you e-mail, shared calendaring, instant messaging + (a somewhat crude) intranet for free." Sure, there are more sophisticated offerings, but they all cost more than $0.  If (or when) Google manages to integrate Google Docs/Spreadsheets and Blogger into their Domains product, they'll be able to offer small businesses the kind of tools that may have been out of reach before.

Now, think back to that tip Rogers received: "MySpace meets Microsoft Live." Myspace is a Web site. But Google wants to build an application. Google probably will recreate Myspace in its own image. But they're going let you do it, too . I think when Google rolls out their version of Myspace, a Google App version of the same product won't be far behind. The idea of social networking for Corporate and Organizational clients isn't new. Facebook owns universities and has some corporate penetration as well. For that matter, Zoho and Zimbra are offer excellent email and collaboration software to small business clients. But Google Domains and Apps is going to bring all those elements under one roof. Communication, collaboration, and social network. Easy to manage. Easy to deploy. And no one will beat the price.

Well, that's my guess anyway. I must make clear this is pure conjecture. I sure as hell don't know anyone at Google. I'm just guessing/fantasizing. But I thought I'd share my guesswork with you guys, and see what you think. There are a lot unanswered questions about how a GoogleSpace might work, but I'm going to leave that for a different post. I'd like to see some feedback first.