[Thomas An.]

Hi all,

This site ( www.virb.com/ ) is very promising. Much more aesthetically pleasing and sophisticated than myspace.

It also seems to be somewhat oriented towards artists, designers, photographers, etc.

There are other social networking sites out there (like myspace, hi5, Netlog, Blogspot, Trig, Facebook, Friendster, Wordpress, Xanga, Bebo, Yahoo 360) ... but somehow Virb seems to be getting it right with a good balance of features.

Your thoughts ?

[Thomas An.]

wow, it can link with a Flickr account and bring image thumbnails into the profile.

It also seems nicely customizable. I see some interesting profiles:
http://virb.com/ucantblamem
http://virb.com/danrubin
http://virb.com/tyson
http://virb.com/svenigson
http://virb.com/digitalmash
http://virb.com/steve_chong_photography

haha, ... http://virb.com/tomanderson

[KurtS]

still happy with virb?

myspace, hi5, Netlog, Blogspot, Trig, Facebook, Friendster, Wordpress, Xanga, Bebo, Yahoo 360, Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Plaxo, Viadeo, Oracle and hundreds more.

it's a social/professional network jungle out there... where are the maxwellians?

[leoA4D]

Creativity without including sex and/or drugs and/or violence in the image. Link: http://virb.com/steve_chong_photography

Clarification: maybe he was inspired by sex, drugs and violence in the creation of these images. Who knows.

Very nice and I will share Steve Chong's site with my kids.

Thanks Thomas.

[Thomas An.]

still happy with virb?

myspace, hi5, Netlog, Blogspot, Trig, Facebook, Friendster, Wordpress, Xanga, Bebo, Yahoo 360, Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Plaxo, Viadeo, Oracle and hundreds more.

it's a social/professional network jungle out there... where are the maxwellians?

Yes, there are *too* many sites out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_so ... g_websites

Aesthetically I still like Virb quite a bit. Myspace is feature-rich. Facebook ... I do not really like their network compartmentalization concept (you are supposed to limit yourself to a regional network). Hi5, is ok ... it can be made to have a clean interface.

Things are a bit slow at Virb right now. They are working to bring on Virb 2.0 ... with more features.

Thinking out loud ... It would be cool to have all Maxwellians in one place so that we get to see artist profiles. Maybe it would be cool to have a social network link under each user's forum profile ... linking to their Virb profile page (or their Hi5, myspace ... etc). I am not sure if phpBB could handle something like that.

[w i l l]

I don't really want to find out about another one of these sites. They already 'waste' hours of my day, but then I suppose you have to classify 'waste'. I find social networking can become work/common interests networking which is useful > not just about posting pictures of the weekend.

[Thomas An.]

I don't really want to find out about another one of these sites. They already 'waste' hours of my day, but then I suppose you have to classify 'waste'. I find social networking can become work/common interests networking which is useful > not just about posting pictures of the weekend.

Well, you don't have to "waste" time in them (as in dwell and try to converse with strangers), but you could park some quick profile info about you and use that profile as an e-business card. Maybe you can post some of your work. (I suppose this can be done in your own website, but in Virb for example you can be a little more casual and paint a little better picture about the personal "you").

[w i l l]

I don't really want to find out about another one of these sites. They already 'waste' hours of my day, but then I suppose you have to classify 'waste'. I find social networking can become work/common interests networking which is useful > not just about posting pictures of the weekend.

Well, you don't have to "waste" time in them (as in dwell and try to converse with strangers), but you could park some quick profile info about you and use that profile as an e-business card. Maybe you can post some of your work. (I suppose this can be done in your own website, but in Virb for example you can be a little more casual and paint a little better picture about the personal "you").

Yeah maybe > but I already use sites like Carbonmade for that. That Tom profile is pretty funny!

[-Adrian]

can't wait for web 3.0, when all of this will be over

[w i l l]

can't wait for web 3.0, when all of this will be over

Why will it be over?

[KurtS]

where are the maxwellians?

Looks like there are many "3d-people" here: LinkedIn

[jurX]

cool thX!

[Thomas An.]

They are starting a private beta phase.
If any of you have time for beta-testing you can apply here: http://blog.virb.com/entries/a-new-virb-a-new-hope/

Maybe you can then tell the rest of us if the improvements are worth it ?

[mtripoli]

Thinking out loud ... It would be cool to have all Maxwellians in one place so that we get to see artist profiles. Maybe it would be cool to have a social network link under each user's forum profile ... linking to their Virb profile page (or their Hi5, myspace ... etc). I am not sure if phpBB could handle something like that.

Wow...gee... I thought thats what I had done with "www.maxwellianart.com" until I got a note from Next Limit telling me that the site was hurting Maxwell... so I took it down...

[Thomas An.]

Mike,

For example: Sometimes (say) we want to find artists that are experts on both Maxwell and Modo, or Maxwell+Rhino, or others that have experience on Maxwell+Rhino+Vray, or artists with inclination on product design, or those who are exclusively specializing on architecture. Such thing would require a thorough relational database... and the places out there with strong enough databases for this type of thing are social networking sites.

On the other hand, MaxwellianArt is a gallery. I don't think it is acting as a social networking *hub*. The mentioning of "artist profiles", was not implying merely galleries, but also any information about the artist themselves; including resumes, or other stuff a person's likes/dislikes, and all things that make you "you".

The problem these days is that there are so many sites out there where people post their information and hang out, where in the end there is no single destination. Instead we have some on myspace, some on Facebook, LinkedIn, Virb, Trig, Friendster ... and hundreds of others. Furthermore we have communities on Devian art, Evermotion, CgTalk ... So, there is no single CG artist "yellow pages" so to speak. Though, the idea is to have a little more than a bare yellow pages, it would be nice to know a little more about the artists and their style and personality.

Of course this is all just daydreaming. There is no way to get everyone to collect themselves in one place.