Vibe Verses is an online community based on Kickapps and actually owned by Vibe. It’s specifically geared towards aspiring artists. It’s been around for quite a while, running contests to grow and stimulate the community. Once you’ve created your profile, you’ll find many of the standard features you’d expect to find on any social network, including:

• Uploading/Rating Photos and Video
• Blogging
• Adding RSS Feeds and Links
• And, obviously, connecting with other members

Since VIBE Verses debuted in May 2007, more than 2,500 videos have been uploaded, generating more than 7 million page views.  To date, more than 100,000 rappers and hip hop enthusiasts have created profiles in the VIBE Verses community.

In this latest contest, Eminem has taken over the Vibe Verses social network and challenged any rapper to freestyle over the instrumental to “The Way I Am” for 60 seconds. Eminem is promoting his upcoming cover of Vibe’s Real Rap issue and his highly anticipated new album “Relapse”. This will actually be the 4th contest that Vibe Verses has run. After recording yourself murdering the instrumental (you killed it, right?), you simply upload your video to enter the contest. The deadline is Aug 30th.

“Battling is the way I came up, so it’s gonna be interesting to watch a rap battle unfold online,” states Eminem. “VIBE is taking it out of the clubs and street corners and putting it on the net.  MCs better bring it, because I’m watching.”

I’ve heard Vibe Verses referred to as a “throw away” community. This is a social network that’s created around some specific event only to die or go into hibernation after the fact. Given how little traffic the site gets (<5k visitors/month according to compete) I can’t help but agree. A quick look at the user-created blogs section also shows an alarming number of spam posts, mostly about…uh…nevermind.

I think we will definitely see a spike in traffic due to this new contest, but it seems there may actually be a small and loyal community already there. I’ve been taking a look at some of the videos and photos and it’s always interesting to watch random people do their thing, even though most of them are not freestyling. I hope they realize the two finalists have to actually battle it out face to face on stage. They will not be able to bring their notebooks.

Being an artist myself, this little community definitely intrigues me. It’s always nice to find a niche community online that shares my specific interests. Not sure if Vibe Verses is going to be that place, but it is definitely a niche social network. Just as I find it’s narrow focus interesting, advertisers do as well. It’s a lot easier to figure out what ads will convert when you already know most of the visitors are probably starving rap artists looking for a break.

What other “throw-away” communities are you aware of? What about topic-focused niche communities? Do you have what it takes to “lose yourself in front of Vibe’s best rapper alive”? I’ll enter if you do