at least for now, it’s reasonably easy to do a bit of browsing and come across profiles of people worth interacting with.

i’m going to enjoy it while i can.

What are the choices here? It’s not clear to me what the site would have to do to attain growth, or if those steps (if known) would necessarily be bad. While I agree the network effects disadvantage makes for long odds, the quality/growth dichotomy seems a bit conclusory. Without knowing what concessions you have in mind I can’t really agree. Is there standard pro-growth spiral you’ve discerned in promising start ups?

I get that a growing user community will eventually degrade the Virb’s design advantages (at least for individual profiles). But that’s true of any site that provides such freedom.

Many of the problems with Myspace aren’t related to design, but features. You can’t find anything with their search tool. Sharing photos is a nightmare, there’s no way to keep up with your friends (a la the Facebook mini-feed) unless you stalk their pages. Tagging is non-existent. You can’t import feeds from your own blog (Virb soon will allow this). If anything wins users for Virb, it’s going to be the feature set. And Virb’s incredible search functionality, which is closely integrated with their Google Ads, is going to help them monetize their growing base.

I’m not saying an optimistic outlook is warranted. But I am suggesting there’s a pathway to possible success here. Even if that success occurs only on a modest sale. You don’t have to kill Myspace. You just need a place at the table.