Dear friends and MySpace

Dear friends,

I am leaving MySpace. I have grown tired of it for a variety of reasons since I first signed up. I probably do not really need to go into these reasons, everyone knows them. For some reason, MySpace is the most universally reviled - yet still incredibly popular - web sites.

When I came across Virb (from the people behind Purevolume) I was pretty impressed. The link I found billed it as a “social network geared towards designers”, which is somewhat misleading. The site is open to everyone and has all the features (and more) that you would expect from a social networking site. It has an easy, built-in customization tool that lets you change the font and colors of your profile, as well as the layout, with drag-and-drop ease. The appeal to designers is the advanced customization, which lets you use your own HTML and CSS, making the possibilities endless.

I think the absolute best feature that Virb has going for it is the “Remove customization” link at the top of every page. Yes, if you do not like the custom look that someone has come up with, you can turn it off and view the profile in its default simplicity. The site remembers when you do this, so every time you return to that profile, it will look the same.

Some other cool features: include your Flickr photos automatically, import your blog posts automatically from RSS feeds, determine whose announcements you do or do not see, and the only ads currently are text ads at the bottom of the page.

Overall it's quite a beautiful application and if you're into the social networking thing, I would recommend ditching MySpace for Virb. You can find me at Virb.com/gregorlove (archived).

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Dear MySpace,

It's been real, and it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun.

I remember when I joined back in 2004, that I thought your design looked outdated, but for whatever reason it did not really bother me. You were relatively small then; maybe I just thought you would grow out of it. Grow you did, but very few improvements came along. With how poorly and non-intuitively you function, I am really surprised you have gained so much popularity over the years. It's baffling.

Anyway, I'm leaving. Your ads are nauseating. Your design is atrocious and has not improved whatsoever. Call me a CSS snob, but tables are for tabular data, not design and positioning. Your security holes have allowed spammers to run rampant among the users. You randomly fail to function and, from what I can tell as a geek, you're most likely a series of hacks strung together instead of one cohesive, stable application. You have destroyed my luck for 10 lifetimes due to all the bulletins I did not re-post, despite their warnings.

Farewell, and good luck competing with Virb.