Virb

One thing we don’t do is review websites. That would be opening the floodgates. Butbutbut Virb is important enough to note.

In short, Virb has taken everything I hate about MySpace and turned it into something I can easily love. They’ve made it good… enjoyable even; not to mention easy navigation and clean layouts. Even though Virb puts all the tools in your hand for complete customization, it would take a lot of work to create anything as tacky as the cleanest MySpace profile. Granted, I have yet to create a personal Virb account — and the BIGSTEREO Virb account sits empty, but there’s a lot of potential here.

Most important though is their Music profiles. Where MySpace is clumsy and halfass, Virb has created streaming music playlists that actually, um, work — and photos that are saved at a decent enough resolution. Their flash video player is easily embeddable and pleasant enough… and unlike MySpace, Virb seems to encourage embedding YouTube videos instead of discouraging. MySpace could learn a lot from Virb.

Check out LCD Soundsystem, Portugal. The Man and hellogoodbye’s profiles for examples.

Virb is still new. There’s not enough content yet, and only a few artists have made the switch. Hopefully soon enough we’ll see more and more… I know I am hoping that Virb will knock MySpace off its thrown throne.