9 posts tagged “virb”

Remember when everyone jumped ship from Friendster to Myspace, and Myspace got so freakin' huge that your grandma joined? Well, that's about to happen again. Since Facebook expanded beyond college students and began allowing everyone to join, the social networking site has doubled in size. By some measures Facebook is already blowing Myspace out of the water:

• More than 24 million active users
• More than 100,000 new registrations per day since January
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the web
• Facebook Photos draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three photo sites combined

While I've been frank about hating Myspace and pimping Virb as the technologically superior alternative, the truth is that Virb has stalled out a bit. People aren't joining. Obviously, Facebook doesn't have that problem. What they do have is a killer set of features Myspace can't begin to touch:

• Tag your friends in photos. Find out when your pals have uploaded photos that include you.
• Twitter-like status function lets you keep up with your pals. You can even subscribe to this in your RSS reader.
  
• Mini-feed also tells you when your pals change their profile, upload their photos, update their blog, or start a new relationship. But...
  
• You can tweak and fine tune your privacy settings individually so that your friends only see what you want them to see. You can even delete individual items from your personal feed.
  
• Import your existing blog/livejournal.
• Share videos and links with your pals.
• Sell your stuff in the new Classified. A little different than Craigslist, because sellers will be people in your network (e.g., Houston or Rice University). Makes it easy to sell and deliver locally to people who can't scam you (because you can see their profile and real name).
• Compete with your pals in March Madness and NBA Playoff brackets.
• Comment on everything.
  

The bottom line is this: Facebook lets you share your life with people you care about while allowing you to easily micro-manage your privacy. Instead of worrying about customizing your crappy looking page, Facebook focuses on your connections with real people. That's why eventually you and everyone you know is going to be on this site. I'm not even going to ask you to join. I don't have to. You, your co-workers, your friends and family will all sign up.  And you will wonder what took you so long.

Why? Because Facebook is becoming something Myspace has never been, and could never be.

Useful.

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.

Virb hasn't announced this feature yet, but RSS feeds are now available for individual blogs, photos, and videos. A link to the RSS feed is already showing up on blog pages.

RSS

The feed URLs are logical enough. For example, my Virb address is  http://www.virb.com/mrshl. So my blog's RSS feed is at http://www.virb.com/rss/mrshl/blog. Turns out your photo and video feeds are similarly easy to find.

• http://www.virb.com/rss/username/photos
• http://www.virb.com/rss/username/videos

Also, in the photo above, there's a blog-specific search box. That's a potentially killer feature, one that lots of blog providers (including Vox) have yet to provide. Unfortunately, in my tests it didn't really work. At all. I submitted a bug, and will let you know what they say.
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UPDATE: I got a response from Virb.com saying the search problem is fixed, and you can now search anyone's blog using a simple text string.

Virb is finally letting you put the Twitter flash widget on your Virb home page. You could already post the badge on your Myspace or blog, but Virb wasn't cooperating. Well, now you can add it. This handy widget displays your posts on Twitter (from either your Gmail chat/AIM, cell phone, or the Web) on another site (e.g., Myspace, Virb, Blogger). Add a post in one place, it shows up everywhere else.

You probably already know how to do add custom widgets to Virb, but if you don't click here for some pics that take you through it.

On some social networking and music sites, when you click on a flash music player to listen to a song, you must remain on that page if you want to keep listening. This is pretty annoying because many users want to keep browsing, even as the song continues to play. Virb announced a new feature yesterday that allows users to do just that. If you want to listen to a band's music while continuing to browse elsewhere, just click "open player in new window." That will open a tab or window for the flash music player. And you can continue browsing.

Player pop up

This post attacking Virb raises a number of stinging, and I think legitimate, criticisms of the nascent, would-be Myspace killer. In his post titled "10 Reasons virb sucks big time," Michael Kamleitner gives voice to a number of misgivings I've had myself:

• virb is not open - in fact it’s way more sealed up than Myspace ever was. virb currently supports external flash-content from YouTube, Google and a few other approved popular service only. compare that to the widget-ecosystem which has emerged around Myspace for the past 2 years. bidirectional content syndication from and to social networks might turn out crucial. it will be exciting to see Myspace’ anticipated/dreaded policy shifts in 2007.
• virb is hard to syndicate - I haven’t found a single RSS-feed yet. not even on my personal blog (c’Mon, even myspace offers RSS-feeds, though without full content)
• virb ain’t valid - agreed, virb’s code is lightyears ahead of Myspace’s, but does it validate against current web-standards? not really.
• virb is poorly communicating itself - I was suprised that virb isn’t using the merits of blogging to communicate with its userbase.
• virb is a silo - there is currently no way (i.e. API) to get data out of a virb-account (except of course by content-scraping). since social networking is almost commoditized (check People Aggregator or Ning) by now, and most users have realized they want to be part of numerous networks instead of one monolithic, this is probably a bad move.
• but most of all: virb is a lonely place (currently only 35 users based in Austria). sure, it’s kinda unfair to compare a service just started with Myspace’ community of +100mio users. but in the end, size-of-community is exactly the key-feature of any closed down, centralized social network as is virb or Myspace.

        (ok, that was only 7 issues, sorry for cheating on the headline )

Excepting the ridiculous criticism of Virb's small size, I think some of these criticisms are dead on, and I love Virb. The two biggies for me are the lack of support for additional "approved" flash services & the lack of communication with users. Yes, Flash widgets have their security issues, but Virb has been less than proactive about approving additional sources, and most widgets in wide use on Myspace (e.g., Twitter, Slide) are safe as milk. A cynical user might wonder whether Virb is just worried about cannibalizing their own offerings. For example, how likely are they to approve Last.fm widgets, when Virb offers their own competing feature. Their reluctance is not entirely unsurprising, but Virb isn't going to compete with Myspace by offering less flexibility.

Much of the skepticism might be alleviated if Virb had a conventional beta blog that addressed user questions regarding upcoming functionality. There is a group on Virb that solicits user feedback, but I've seen nary on official Virbster writing in response. Communication with users of a new service is paramount if you want to retain their tenuous loyalty. As big a Virb fan as I am, I still think Facebook is better, offering more useful features and excellent communication with readers.

Okay, but does Virb really suck? Nah. This list of features literally counts the ways in which the site is better than Myspace. And Virb is still new enough that users are willing to give them a pass while they roll out additional features and functionality. But they need to be careful not to spoil the honeymoon.

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EDIT: Turns out Virb does have a group for its developers. But they're not really using it to talk about what's happening at Virb. Actually, they're not using it at all.

Uh, maybe not. But this amusing (and very fake) Virb profile for Myspace founder Tom Anderson is funny as hell. It also makes a great point about the flexibility of Virb. It might look like Myspace, but every link on the page is a functioning part of Virb's back-end feature set. The not-so-subtle implication is this: Virb is so customizable you can even make it look like Myspace. Unfortunately, Tom can't make Myspace look like Virb.

Tom

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UPDATE: One of the features that's received a lot of attention is the "turn off customization" button. How well does it work? Well, here's the same page above after I pressed the magic button.

Tom without customization

After turning off customization, you see a bare-bones profile page. All the content is still there. You can restore the customization using the same button, and in an instant, the souped-up page is back. What's that sound you hear? The grateful sighs of a generation poisoned by terrible design.

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!

If you haven't heard, Virb.com is an ambitious new social network that is aiming directly for Myspace. If that sounds foolish to you, you're not alone. But I've been on it a few days now, having procured one of the artificially "scarce" invites. I have to say I'm very, very impressed. To paraphrase another Voxer, Virb does indeed fix just about everything that's wrong about Myspace. One cue as to its quality is that an early enthusiastic demo for Virb has been other Web designers. Another indicator of success is that Virb is the brainchild of the same folks what brought you the beautiful PureVolume.

I'll be writing a longer post about my initial impressions, but for now, don't take my word for it. See for yourself.