Social Marketing Club

Article from Mashable.com

If 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.