Looking at Virb

[charmian]

I found quite an interesting new web service, Virb. It's sort of like... If Tumblr and LJ mated and had a social network (rather than a blogging site). Users can import feeds, update their status (like facebook status), add text, pictures, audio, videos, etc, share them with only select groups, form discussion groups,

Here's the site tour: Tour

What's neat about Virb is that it seems to offer LJ-esque granular permissions on media beyond text. You can form groups of people known as "circles" and say, lock a photo only to the circle "friends."

Here's my profile on Virb: I chose the "blog" type of virb rather than the personal one. Anyone else want to try it with me?

Comments

[elena]

Actually, I had a profile I hadn't touched in ages. They seem to have revamped the site navigation a lot, I remember it being more profile-centric like bebo or hi5 instead of tumbleblog-ish back in the day. I think I browsed a few circles, didn't find much activity, and it drifted out of my attention.

[elena]

...Right now, it would be SO COOL to be able to explore groups other than the three featured in the "explore groups" page. Just saying. =_=

[charmian]

Yeah, it has become more tumblelogish, and also there is a "blogger" type of profile. I think it has a fair amount of potential, but they don't seem to have marketed it very well.

[elena]

Yeah, they just didn't (or don't) have the critical user mass required for a profile/group based website to thrive. Maybe they should have tried to find a niche population to start with, like bands and mySpace, college students and Facebook, Brazilians and Orkut, and so on...

[sub_divided]

If they can poach from Facebook they might do all right. FB's huge and lots of FB users, having built up a large virtual network or recreated a rl one on the service, are feeling burnout from too much living in public. They'd probably welcome the chance to share with large groups that aren't THE WHOLE WORLD.

Added your Virb feed to my RSS reader. I wonder if there is a way to subscribe to just text updates (blog entries), and not status updates (tweets).

[charmian]

At this point, I think nearly everyone who sets up a social network is poaching from facebook. XD To the point where what is needed is not 'replacing' or 'poaching' from facebook, but 'complementing' facebook.

But IIRC, isn't it also possible to create subgroups on FB so you're not sharing with EVERY SINGLE ONE of your facebook friends?

Heh, I don't know if I'm going to be using it much, but go ahead. XD