The Most Beautiful Social Networks
June 1st, 2009 by BlakeIf you asked most MySpace-haters what’s their problem with the service, they’d probably say: it’s ugly. Meanwhile, people tell us they are switching from Twitter to Pownce because it’s prettier and easier to use. For those who prize beauty above all else, we brought together 10 of the prettiest social networks.
Virb-generally known as the designer’s MySpace, Virb lives up to the hype by offering sleek and easy-to-customize profile design. The details on various features, for example music and video player, are quite polished – even the ads look nice. If blinking images, huge sigs that mess up the formatting and colorful backgrounds make you insane, Virb is the right place for you.
Trig – Trig is a sweet sight for the sore eyes of a web designer/hipster who spent too many days wailing about horrid MySpace profiles. It’s quite similar to Virb but in our opinion looks even nicer, with black and 20 shades of gray being the dominant colors. Trig is mostly music-oriented, so if you have a band that’s simply too artsy to have a MySpace profile, you know what to do.
Purevolume- neat and tidy are the words that first come to mind when you first look at Purevolume. The site is purely music-oriented and the profiles are divided between artists and listeners. The actual profiles, while beautiful, have the problem of looking all pretty much the same; we like the black/white/gray look, but more customization options wouldn’t hurt.
my.9rules – 9rules is a blogging community which always put a lot of emphasis on quality design, so it’s no wonder that their social network, my.9rules, looks very neat, too. Just like on Purevolume, though, the profiles on 9rules are visually very similar, which keeps the look of the site consistent but it also makes the whole experience slightly dull.
Pownce- Pownce has been categorized as everything: from web-based IM to a forum, so we guess that simply calling it a social network isn’t that far off. Taking the Twitter recipe and perfecting it, Pownce added some of its own flavor to the mix, and one of the features we really like about it are skins. Don’t get us wrong, Pownce looks nice to begin with, but having the option to change the skins is a big plus. Currently, the only beef we have with this feature is the fact that the available amount of skins is so small: only four. Give us more!
Flickr- yes, we like the Flickr
look. It probably has to do with the fact that the site is full of beautiful photos, but Flickr’s easy-on-the-eyes aesthetics are carefully thought out and make the site really enjoyable to use.
Threadless – one of the first really successful sites that harness the power of community for commercial purposes, Threadless enables users to submit their own T-Shirt designs; the community votes for the very best, which then become a part of Threadless’ official catalog. The designs are really great, and Threadless has been the favorite place to buy t-shirts for many a design student for quite some time. The site itself has a laid-back design that might not appeal to everyone, but you have to give it credit for originality.
Shelfari- Shelfari is a community of book lovers which you can browse by user, by interest groups or by books themselves. It’s all packed in a neat visual package which might not stand out with extraordinary design, but it will make it really easy to find your way around the site. The inclusion of actual front pages of individual books is a nice touch, too.
Beautiful Society- ok, this one was a no-brainer. With a name like that, one would expect beautiful design and Beautiful Society delivers. The site revolves around the concept of “favorite things” – users get to pick things they like, which become separate entities that get more votes and rise the rank of popularity as more and more users add them to the list. All this is wrapped in a nice orange/blue design with a lot of rounded corners and nothing to upset our sensitive eyes.
Humble Voice – we’ve saved the best for last. HumbleVoice is yet another community for designers, artists and musicians, and it looks gorgeous. Page real estate is used generously, with most images on the site being really large, and all of the content is wrapped up in neat little boxes. As sometimes happens with art-related sites, some of the fonts are too tiny to read if you don’t have 20/20 vision, but we’re ready to forgive Humble Space this small blunder. After all, it’s artists we’re talking about here.
-You can find this original article at http://mashable.com/2007/07/09/beautiful-social-networks/
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