With the exception of Facebook, no other social networking platform has enjoyed as much success as MySpace. In spite of (or arguably because of) a crappy and difficult to work with layout and an ad and "useless click" heavy site design, MySpace continues to be the go to choice for people setting up profiles on the web, if only because of the large number of users on the site.

But, if all of your friends are not on MySpace or you are not concerned about using a social networking site to hook back up with your buds from high school, allow me to suggest another alternative for you. VIRB is a social networking site with few ads (and I have seen none of the blinky clicky variety), extensive and elegant customization, integration with several other popular web services, and generally none of the cruft one finds on those other sites.

As a for instance on the cool integration with other sites, you can upload your photos to VIRB, or you can tie your profile in with your flickr photostream and display those in your profile. There is also a iTunes plugin that works similar to last.fm's iscrobbler in that it displays what you are listening to in iTunes on your profile. The feature set on the music part is not quite up to the snuff of last.fm and won't replace it for me just yet, but if they continue to improve there is a possibility that it might.

So, go ahead, give it a shot.

*VIRB.com
*Me on VIRB
*VIRB is - about page and examples of some of the beautiful profiles people are creating.