Some friends and I run what we call a “pseudo-scientific music collective,” The Periodic Label. We have a MySpace page, but if it were up to me I’d never do anything with it. Luckily, it is kind of up to me, so after setting it up, I pretty much pay no attention to it. I’ll admit, it’s somewhat interesting to hear that a Thai webcam girl wants to be my friend, but from a design/usability standpoint, the site fails miserably.

Not only have they put web design in the hands of people who know nothing about it, but they’ve also made it incredibly difficult for those of us that do. The code looks like it was written with no forethought, and the styles are applied completely ambiguously. For instance, the links in the header and some (not all) of the links in the body have the same class. It makes it nearly impossible to instill any sense of hierarchy in the page. Plus, the class and id names are completely random for the most part, so it took about 6 hours of trial and error to get the page to something I was mildly happy with.

Setting up our Virb page, on the other hand, was actually enjoyable. Their interface allows direct editing of the source code (at least the part that relates to your section of the page), and all the class and id names are intuitive. They also offer a basic customization interface, which accomplishes much of what MySpacers want to do, without allowing anything that will compromise the layout. In perhaps the smartest feature I’ve seen in my admittedly limited experience with social sites, there is a link in the header that allows you to remove the customization from anyone’s page. And right now, the advertising is limited to a single text ad per page, in the Virb footer. I’m not sure how long that can last, but I definitely appreciate it.

The design and development group really paid attention to the details, and showed much restraint in the overall design. There is plenty of negative space, the tag cloud on the homepage is a welcome change from the awkward versions that change text size to show popularity, and the load times are mercifully short compared to MySpace. See the image below as an example of the attention to detail. Rounded corners are obviously a trademark of recent web designs, but the Virb team has rounded only 3 corners. It’s obviously not a groundbreaking design element, but it just adds a little extra visual interest to the page. And tells me that some thought went into the design.

I really hope that I’m not alone in noticing these things, and that it’s enough to grab some attention away from MySpace, as nothing would make me happier than never having to go there again. Well, except for when I have to give a shoutout to my new Thai webcam friends.