Purpose of Virb, the Social Network Site

So I clicked on the first link we were given to do a little poking around beforehand. I saw that they had categories, like art for instance, and I was like oh! well I guess I never thought of social networking sites as being art orientated. Then I scanned the possibilities and saw that they had deviantART listed. I totally was going to pick that one but since I've already been there I thought I would use it as a last resort. I wanted to choose a site that was not professional stuff like the first couple I clicked on, but made by, our favorite word, amateurs.

Then I found Virb. It interested me because it was not only for photography, design, and fine arts, but also for audio, video, and companies, besides the regular personal profile you can have. The other cool thing I looked at were the instructional videos which I actually found pretty helpful.

Signing up for Virb is crazy simple: it basically tells you to do the whole regular shpeel, name, email, social security. Kidding. But what I thought was interesting were the different options you can choose for your profile. First there is the personal profile. It's made for individuals who wish to just have a profile, who "tumbl", who blog, who photo-share, etc. Then there is the audio profile which is for musicians, record labels, comedians, and podcasters to name a few.You can also choose the portfolio option which would be for designers, photographers, filmmakers, and it does say bloggers which I'm not sure why it wouldn't just be on the personal one, but whatever. Last, you can pick other, which is for companies, brands, products, or organizations. '

Once you sign up, you have your profile. On all the pages, which is another feature I like, is the "virb bar" which has an explore pull down menu where you can pick what media you would like to explore that the virb team picks out beforehand as some of the stuff they like best. This would definitely help in generating a community out of strangers who sign up for the site.

Another plus: in your homepage you have a "follow" like blogger where you can see snippets of other people's twitter imports, things that are being liked on the site and content that's being added.

Basically the reasoning for this website is very specific, but the site itself allows you to explore the content in so many different ways. The point is to have fun, share and post your artwork in many different medias, and to make connections with other artists. The bigger idea is to get all the different artists out there to come together. Like I said before, deviantART deals really only with photography, fine art, and graphic art. I think virb probably came out saying "we're going to round up the whole art community because everyone plays a part in creating art and collaboration is important. I think collaboration is important too and this site is great for that. You can comment, message, like things, group artists together, organize, and display yourself.

If you don't have your own portfolio site, if you don't have time to get to the portfolio center, I would do this. They have some cool skins/layouts. I'm even going to consider keeping mine, of course depending on my crazy life/lack of time.