Good looking content on Virb

I signed up for an account with Virb last week, mainly because I was curious about a service I started hearing about on podcasts like MacBreak Weekly. Virb is a sort of early stage, next generation MySpace and a darn good looking one at that.

So what is Virb all about?

Virb puts all of the things that make you you — photos, videos, blogs — in one place. So you can find friends (and friends can find you).

When you visit the site it really doesn’t look like a typical social networking site. It actually looks way too good looking. When you sign up you are prompted to create a profile for yourself where the emphasis is on forms of media like photos (there is a Flickr tie in), video and music.

The profile page is customisable to the point where you can move elements around the page much like you can customise start pages (Google, Netvibes and Pageflakes, for example).

There are some pretty interesting people on Virb already. I found the profile of Lily Allen and a new hot new media personality, iJustine (aka Justine Ezarik). The site actually makes me feel a bit insecure. All the content you see on the main content pages is far too good looking and cool for me to seriously think about uploading my low quality videos of my puppies. Here is an example of the content you can view on Virb. It is a music video and what I found pretty cool was the little light switch on the page itself which enables you to dim everything except the video itself for better viewing:

Virb doesn’t seem to allow people to upload new music. Instead you can install something called virbTunes which tracks your listening habits through an iTunes plugin and that then links you to the artists who are on Virb. You can add them to your friends list and when you make use of a music player on your profile, you can stream their music through it. In the last few minutes I found artists like Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan and Delerium on the site. It seems you can add their music to your profile and share your preferences with visitors.

Future features include RSS imports so you don’t need to repeat yourself on yet another blog, expanded groups functionality and more customisation options for your profiles (including multiple profile styles and layouts). My feeling is that I really like this service even though I can’t stand the thought of moving from Facebook or my existing social networking services just yet. That being said, this could well become the next MySpace/Facebook so it is worthwhile jumping in now and taking a look before your preferred username is gone …

Technorati Tags:
virb, first look, content sharing, social networking, video, music, lily allen, justine ezarik, groups