Campbell Interactive

Sometimes I visit myspace.com. I go there to search the names of people I know or more to the point people I knew. I’m terrible at maintaining contact with the people who flow in and out of my life. It’s not that I no longer consider these people friends, I think it probably is closer to say that I haven’t earned their friendship in return. I blame it on my hatred of telephones, but as technology evolves my lack of phone conversation skill becomes weak as the foundation for an excuse in not communicating.

Enter social networking, and hurriedly force it back out the door in came in. Why? Let me see if I can wrap that reasoning in a overly complex metaphor. It’s like riding a moped, fun till your friends find out. I giggle when I stumble on a high school pal, the coolest guy in school, the guy who took your lunch money and visually defined wedgie for you without the request to do so, that now nearly 16 years later is all OMG!!! ROXR!!! on My Space with flashing kitty bg’s.

It feels wrong, and not the good kind of wrong, it’s the “why am I wearing powder blue polyester at this $5,000 a plate black tie event” kind of wrong. For me it’s a big part of why I never drank the kool-aid. HTML in the wrong hands can be a greater assault on the senses than… pretty much anything, but now there is a new kid on the block and this one came to play. VIRB is My Space for grown ups or at least the visually well adjusted. It’s classy, tight, extremely well thought out and brilliantly executed and this is based solely on the features that have been released. There are aspects of it’s model that have not yet seen the light of day and when they do it will be ridiculous the success this site obtains.

The biggest reason I believe it will do so well has to do with how well it is designed, and how well it allows you to customize your space on the site. It’s varying levels of complexity allow for those with a greater than cursory knowledge of html to go all out like Mike Davidson, or keep it nice and simple with control over fonts and colors like yours truly. In my opinion this type of restraint will keep the site flexible yet far less breakable than what I have seen elsewhere. The true test will come when the flashing kitty BG’s begin their assault, but I have confidence that Virb will overcome.

So will this site cure me of my inability to communicate with those out there I call friend? Probably not I fear there is a greater psychological battle being waged there or perhaps it’s just me being lazy but at least I hold myself out there now in the social ether awaiting the chiding and scolding of those I have let slip out of contact, assuming of course they find me, shhhh.