Virb was a website owned by Media Temple that let individuals and businesses create their own websites. Users added web content using simple tools and then customized the design of their site using built-in options or with

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

and

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

. They could also connect to networking websites such as

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

History

After the launch of

PureVolume PureVolume (formerly Unborn Media) was a website for uploading and streaming of music files, the first independently run of its type. PureVolume was created by Unborn Media, Inc; Mitchell Pavao; Brett Woitunski; and Nate Hudson, all from the Univer ...

in 2003, Unborn Media attempted to mimic the website's success by launching Virb, where PureVolume focused primarily on music, Virb would focus on more social features. Virb was launched, as an invite-only beta form in 2006, and was publicly launched in March 2007. Virb was highly praised in 2007 by the Houston Press for its unique design, customisation, and innovative features, such as iTunes integration. Virb was widely heralded as the possible successor to MySpace, due to the site's similar layout and functionality. Virb failed to attract a wider audience, and by the end of 2007,

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

passed both Virb and MySpace in terms of

monthly active users Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...

. In early 2008, Virb was listed as one of the biggest technology disappointments of 2007 by

PC Advisor ''Tech Advisor'', previously known as ''PC Advisor'', is a consumer tech website and digital magazine published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc, which also produces ''Macworld, PCWorld'' and ''TechHive.'' IDG Inc was acquired by Blackstone in 2 ...

, among other websites, due to its focus on social networking basics, and lack of innovative features. The web hosting company Media Temple purchased it in June 2008, despite its failure, and in August 2010 relaunched as a do-it-yourself website builder. Smith stated that the "core desire wasn't ever to build and run a social network.

hey Hey or Hey! may refer to: Music * Hey (band), a Polish rock band Albums * ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014 * ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980 * ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title s ...

wanted to build this really cool niche area for the people MySpace didn't really work for." In July 2012, Virb announced that it had officially joined the

Media Temple Media Temple is a website hosting and cloud hosting provider, which focuses on web designers, developers and creative agencies. The company was founded in 1998 by former CEO Demian Sellfors and John Carey. It is headquartered in Los Angeles, Ca ...

family of products, promising new features, more dedicated customer support, and better system monitoring. In 2014,

GoDaddy.com GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. , GoDaddy has more than 21 million customers and over 6,600 employees worldwide. The co ...

acquired Media Temple and its subsidiaries, including Virb. Soon after, changing leadership priorities led most of the Virb development team to depart, though GoDaddy kept a small skeleton crew to maintain existing functionality and keep the site running. GoDaddy shut down Virb in June 2020 without warning its customers, leaving many without migration plans or backups of their work. The Virb.com homepage left only a eulogy message, reading "After 10 years proudly helping customers like you with Virb, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the platform."

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.virb.com Defunct social networking services Blog hosting services 2008 mergers and acquisitions