VIRB is so cool

Hey, so I skipped the whole facebook thing. I know, everyone's on facebook. Everyone and their mother is on facebook. You know that something has reached mainstream when people on my wife's team at the hospital are all talking about their facebook pages. Granted, some people didn't get the finer points ("What does it mean to poke someone? It is platonic, or does it mean more than that?"), but it is definitely mainstream.

So what is this VIRB thing? Well, I don't think it's just another 'me-too' social network. I was talking with K about it, and she asked what's the point of joining something if no one you know is on it... Good point. (Touché.) And I agree, it's been kind of strange adding strangers to my friends list based on profiles. And I'm not finding any high school friends or anything like that. But I'm discovering new music, new bands. The discoverability factor for music is very high on VIRB. In fact, the ability to add music to your personal player is pretty cool, and then be able to recommend it to your friends is killer. VIRB can also track what you're playing on iTunes and automatically keep track of your playlist on your profile. As an artist you can post your tracks for fans to listen to, they can grab the lyrics if you want, and they can also download the file if you want.

Of course, what new site is complete without tagging? VIRB has tagging for everything. You can tag your photos, your blog posts. You can tag your friends (although they don't get to see your tags for them, they're just for you to sort out the real friends from the groupies... ha ha...). All your profile lists become tags, so all the music, books, movies and so on become tags that you can search by.

There's also groups, and speaking of groups... I just started my first group today. I called it "Hop On Pop" after the Dr. Seuss book, and it's dedicated to the sharing of children's books that you like to read to your kids. Check it out. And join VIRB! You'll like it, trust me. :)

technorati tags:VIRB, social, network, facebook, music, discoverability, children's, books

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