So you’re realizing there’s more to life than virtual pokes and friend counts? I’m glad you’re catching up!

Since Facebook and MySpace have been hogging the social networking market for years now, it’s only fair that you should be introduced to new places to hang out online that you can get more out of than the current offerings of virtual baseball card collection of friends and acquaintances.

Here are of social networking sites that aren’t Facebook or MySpace just waiting for you to sign up and make something more of yourself than the number one in your friends top eight.

Virb

From the creators of Pure Volume, a music networking site for unsigned bands, http://Virb.com is effortlessly what MySpace wishes it could be: an arts and music oriented social site with few ads and a clean basic design.

If you know something about hypertext markup language and cascading style sheets, then Virb becomes your fully customizable sandbox.

Imagine life beyond two column layouts. And the best part ... if you come across a profile that hurts your eyes, Virb will let you toggle the design back to the site default to save your retinas.

Prettiness aside, Virb is the place to be in terms of genuine connections: you won’t find your request inbox flooded with friend invites from wannabe international supermodels or too-good-to-be-legal overseas bargains inviting you to visit their Web sites here.

If you want even more indie credit to your name, you can sign up to privately beta test their working redesign at http://virb.com/beta.

Insufferable self satisfaction can finally be yours.

iLike and Last.fm

Audiophiles – these are your networks! Join http://ilike.com and let the site take stock of your iTunes or Windows Media Player library, then sit back and hear new music based on your known tastes.

iLike will connect you with other musically minded members and their collections as well as let you download free mp3’s from unsigned artists – legally!

An account with http://last.fm will hook you up to the largest streaming music catalogue online. Like iLike, Last.fm will connect you to musical twin souls and let you listen to full songs and albums for free that others have uploaded to their server.

Free mp3 downloads are available but, based on your preferences, Last.fm will do you one better and mix together a personal radio playlist for you that grows according to your taste’s changes over time.

There’s only one bad point going for both of these sites: once you tune in, you might never tune out.

Good Reads and Shelfari

For those of you looking to share more than music, age, sex and location, http://goodreads.com and http://shelfari.com are there for you with brain food: books.

Connect to either Good Reads and Shelfari and start building up your virtual bookshelf to let others know what you’ve read, what you’re in the middle of right now and what you’re hoping to get your hands on soon.

Read other users reviews to find new books to love or hate and even write your own to help others along their literary ways.

The only difference between both bibliophile sites is aesthetics: sign up to Good Reads if you’re a utilitarian Spartan, Shelfari if you can’t live without shiny web 2.0 eye candy.

Regardless of which of the two you choose, you’ll still relish the superior quality of your friends intellectual tastes when comparing lists with your meatspace friends on other, glitter graphics saturated social networks.

MeetUp

Want to share your love of vintage skateboard decks with other aficionados? Get an http://meetup.com account and start a group to meet with real people in meatspace to talk about your hobbies.

If starting and maintaining a group sounds like too much effort, you can browse through local groups to find some Friday night sports bar flies or full moon kayaking buddies to join.

In MeetUp’s search bar, plug your zip code and number of miles you’re willing to travel and you’ll find meet up groups for everything from picking apart your favorite TV show over coffee to belly dancing on the beach, to downtown triathlon training, karaoke bar hopping and even urban farming.

Twitter

Yes, I’ve talked about http://twitter.com before and I’ll talk about it again. Why? Twitter is Facebook statuses distilled for those too busy to manage a full social network profile’s upkeep.

Want to let friends know what you’re up to in 140 characters or less? Tweet it. Share a neat photo you just shot without having to upload it to a gallery? Tweet it through http://twitpic.com.

Build up your friends list on Twitter and you’ll have a real time update of how and what everyone’s doing when they update their profiles.

Simple and sweet, Twitter makes staying in touch as easy as it gets online.