Lars-Christian.com|This is me at the intarwebs.

I was recently invited to participate in a private beta testing of VIRB.com, which is a brand new “MySpace clone”, in the sense that it offers many of the same socializing features that MySpace helped popularize. Before I get started, let me just say that I have tried out both MySpace and Facebook, without ever really getting into it. Partly because they seemed to lack a “hook”, so to say, in the sense that they never really managed to offer me anything of actual value. In the case of Facebook however, I must say that I’ve always had a thing for the look and feel of the site. Infact I’d actually consider it the complete opposite of MySpace’s horrible user interface.

VIRB however, takes it to a whole new level. I have quite simply fallen in love with the whole UI of the site. It’s intuitive as can be from what I’ve seen so far, and the whole feel of it is very polished and extremely stylish, and of course it sports a host of different “Web 2.0-ish” design elements. I know I can’t resist a nice mix of all that!

The good people over at Unborn Media, famous for their work with PureVolume, are also behind VIRB, and that alone should be incentive to give it a try. I haven’t given it a full testrun just yet, but some of the basic features include photo and video uploading, as well as the expected networking features like friendlists, personal and private messaging and so forth. A pretty cool feature is that you have complete control over the CSS-elements in your profile, which makes it easy to customize the look and feel of it.

As soon as I get the time, I will give it a more extensive testrun, and write about it here on my blog. Until that however, I have quite a few invites to the beta program, so if you’re interested in checking it out, post a comment (again, with a valid e-mail, that will never be shown to the public) and I’ll send an invite your way!