Let me get this out of the way: I freakin’ hate social networking sites. I don’t know why but I just couldn’t get a grip on how these sites became so massively popular. In my entire internet life I maintained 2 accounts: Friendster and MySpace. Friendster because it’s the social network of choice for most Filipinos and all my high school and college friends are there. MySpace because, well, it’s MySpace. I rarely check those 2 accounts unless I receive a notice on my inbox that I have a new something. I refuse to sign-up to any more as countless invitations arrive on my mailbox goes directly to the trash or the spam folder. Then came Virb.

I first heard about Virb while listening to a recent episode of MacBreak Weekly. I became curious and decided to check it out. The homepage alone shows that it’s a “cool” site, with featured prominent artists and a nicely-designed layout. Signing up is a breeze and I’m creating my profile in no time.

Profile customization in Virb makes MySpace’ looks like a dull donkey poop. Default modules include Movies, Music and Interest but you could add a bunch of new modules which you could place whatever you want, may it be a YouTube video or a Flickr stream. How these modules appear on your page is up to you by using Virb’s customize layout page with a drag and drop interface. Although the default profile looks great as it is, you may want to change colors and you could easily do that as well. For advanced users and has a lot of free time in their hands, Virb allows you to change everything in CSS. I actually saw a lot of cool-looking profiles while browsing around and none of those annoying ones in MySpace.

Virb also got everything covered from music to user-uploaded videos. Everything here is pretty much MySpace-like with the exception of a really horrible interface. Actually, what really got me hooked on this site is how easy it is to use and the interface is just, well, awesome.

It remains to be seen if Virb actually trounce MySpace but I kinda hope it wouldn’t. I can just imagine the comments being overrun by flashing GIFs and profiles with pink ponies dancing around the background.

My Virb profile can be found right here.