(usually barefoot) meg

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Mar 24, '08 12:04 AM
for everyone

I recently received an email from Xanga essentially begging me to come back (not that I was ever really there to begin with). The tone of the message was not so much, "We've got great stuff! Come check us out again." but rather "We need you! We're dying here. We've got to pump our numbers or we're toast."

When you send something out like that, you're essentially telling your users that now is the time to leave because their services might not be around much longer. It doesn't seem like a smart marketing decision to me, but what do I know?

So I had to raise an eyebrow when I received an email from "my friends at Tribe.net" last week. (To be perfectly honest, I don't even remember ever signing up for Tribe. But knowing me, I did. If a site isn't laid out intuitively and doesn't have functions that I'm looking for, I tend to bail pretty quickly.)

It looks like Tribe.net is starting a premium service. Generally when a premium service is introduced, it's to provide content or functions or something that the freebie users won't be getting. A site adds a premium service, then covers it in bling to entice user to pay a little something for it, right? Well, here's the email that Tribe.net sent me. (I'm starting with the second paragraph. The first one was a boring blah, blah, blah asking their forgiveness for sending the email in the first place.) Listen to their reason why their users should upgrade to a premium account:

"We’ve listened to our users for solutions to our site instability problems." [Woa! Stop right there. Instability problems? I'm glad you're listening to your users, but... You're going to send out an email to every stinkin' user of your site to tell them that you have instability problems?!!!! Brilliant.] "The overwhelming consensus is that our users love tribe.net so much that they are willing to pay for a premium subscription for all the functions that we now give to you." [So they're apparently not going to give you anything new. What you've been getting for free all this time, they'll now be giving to you only through the premium service. And those instability problems? Will those be solved? You know, they didn't really say, did they?] "We launched a premium subscription service on November 30, 2007 to allow folks to support tribe.net at a rate of five bucks for thirty days." [Let's see, that's about $60/year. So in a world where social networking sites are a dime a dozen, and most have a free service, Tribe.net is now going to allow you to pay $60 a year for a site with instability problems. Sounds great. And what's this about "support Tribe"? Tribe needs support? When a company needs support and they're begging their users for it, that's a sign that the VC's have already seen the writing on the wall.]

[Oh wait! I missed something. The free service will still be available after all. Hallelujah. I didn't want to have to start paying for that instability. So read on. Now you get to find out what the paying members get. Drumroll please.] "Tribe’s traditional, free service is going to continue just as it always has and always will. Those that want to upgrade can click on the PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION link, fill out the information, and sign up. The premium subscribers will automatically have a gold star instead of the orange bubble when they’re online." [OMG! I'm so excited I might just wet my pants. A gold star?!?!? I hope they also send me a gold star sticker that I can wear on my forehead.] "We also offer bi-annual and annual memberships for $25 and $50 respectively. Each of these services comes with a free 4 day trial period -- you can cancel anytime before the 4 days is up and not be charged."

[Hey, don't stop reading yet. There's more!] "We’re aware that some people may not be able to sign up for premium service for various reasons. For those folks we offer the free service (hopefully they’ll click on some of those ads), but we’re also offering an ADOPT A TRIBE ORPHAN" [That's their emphasis, not mine.] link where some kind folks can help out one of their friends (or maybe a lucky, random person) by upgrading them to premium subscription status." [I'm all vaklempt. What can I say? That's just so... so... thoughtful of them. Tribe orphans. Brilliant. I wonder if the CEO is going to be a Tribe orphan soon.]

"What do you get for this? Currently, the only benefits are turning off the advertising and access to our new web-based TRIBECHAT function. TRIBECHAT is a Jabber based instant messenger that is accessible to all tribe members who have a Jabber client such as Adium (for Apple) or Trillian (for PC). This allows you to chat with anyone on your tribe friends list." [In other words, you lose the ads. Yeah, that's cool. And you get the ability to do what any instant messaging program does. *twirls finger* Or better yet, you get to do, for a $60 a year fee, what Multiply has for free every day, for every user, in every context -- LiveReplies. I think that Tribe CEO is going to be a Tribe orphan sooner rather than later.]

[Another blah, blah, blah paragraph.] "Ever since we launched this service, we've felt so grateful for this outpouring of support from the Tribe communities. You all have made tribe.net a wonderful place to connect, and we hope that you'll think of us more in the future. Big changes are on the horizon so keep in touch to know the latest."

"Finally, if you've purchased a premium subscription, we salute you. We have over 1000 subscribers now" [Wow. A thousand. Going through the roof already, eh? Beautiful.] "and the number is steadily growing each day! We are dedicated to making tribe.net the best experience we can for you, and your subscription benefits the entire user community of tribe! If you know a premium member, thank them for supporting tribe!" [And that instability problem? We never got back to that one, did we?]

"Check in at http://www.tribe.net and reconnect!" [Because we need you over here or we're all going to be Tribe orphans, dammit!]

... Beautiful.

Tags: 2008, web 2.0

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zebaron wrote on Mar 24

barefootmeg said

When you send something out like that, you're essentially telling your users that now is the time to leave because their services might not be around much longer. It doesn't seem like a smart marketing decision to me, but what do I know?

*cough* Y!360 Refugees has 1800 members. *cough* We all came from a common place with an eerily similar problem *cough*

zebaron wrote on Mar 24

barefootmeg said

we’re also offering an ADOPT A TRIBE ORPHAN" [That's their emphasis, not mine.] link where some kind folks can help out one of their friends (or maybe a lucky, random person) by upgrading them to premium subscription status."

This was what got it for me.

Who in God's green earth is going to pay $60 a year for a random stranger?

jacquie1951 wrote on Mar 24

OMG,you guys cracked me up! lol I don't think I've ever heard of tribe.net until now. Thankfully!

xexxdemone wrote on Mar 24

barefootmeg said

we’re also offering an ADOPT A TRIBE ORPHAN"

Ok, I'll take twenty...I need the cheap labor...

psychotic2 wrote on Mar 24

barefootmeg said

"We’ve listened to our users for solutions to our site instability problems." [Woa! Stop right there. Instability problems? I'm glad you're listening to your users, but... You're going to send out an email to every stinkin' user of your site to tell them that you have instability problems?!!!! Brilliant.]

LMAO....I've never heard of Tribe.net but it sounds similar to Yahoo's problems with instability with all their sites.

xexxdemone wrote on Mar 24

barefootmeg said

our new web-based TRIBECHAT function

Didn't we used to do that? back when we still killed our food and cooked our meat over an Open fire...ah the good old days, everyone sitting around the fire luaghing at whose spear didn't even break the skin, not that's what 'TRIBE CHAT' is all about

thedudeoforkut wrote on Mar 24

When I signed up for Xanga they gave me a month of their premium service to try to entice me to use it. I think Tribe is kinda of neat for RSS aggregation but there are far better sites that are doing that now such as Friend Feed and Profilactic.

barefootmeg wrote on Mar 24

thedudeoforkut said

but there are far better sites that are doing that now

that's exactly it. the number of sites have been growing, the competition is picking up, and i think xanga and tribe might be the beginning of that bubble burst.

but to send out an email to your users that hints to them that you're going down? that's what i simply don't get. go down fighting, guys, not whining.

barefootmeg wrote on Mar 24

xexxdemone said

Ok, I'll take twenty...I need the cheap labor...

lol!

thedudeoforkut wrote on Mar 24

barefootmeg said

but to send out an email to your users that hints to them that you're going down? that's what i simply don't get. go down fighting, guys, not whining.

Not only that, but don't say you aren't stagnant when you are.

barefootmeg wrote on Mar 24

thedudeoforkut said

stagnant

that's how i feel about a lot of social networking sites. they think that simply existing is enough to get people all heated up. but once you've been there a few years and you realize that all the boo boo's are still boo boo's and nothing new has come out, why stay?

as much as multiply's upgrades can sometimes cause intermittent hiccups, i love the fact that this site is constantly improving, fixing boo-boo's and adding new features that just plain rock.

i like the underlying structure and intent of multiply. it's a solid skeleton, so to speak, on which to build. many sites start out with crappy skeletal structures that simply can't support future add-ons. (which is how i feel about facebook's apps. facebook just plain doesn't have much skeleton. then you throw a hundred bajillion apps on it, and the next thing you know people start running away in fear that the whole thing is going to collapse on top of them. rob and i started interviewing our waitress the other night on her social networking usage. she left myspace for facebook because she felt like myspace was getting too cluttered. well if an app-filled facebook isn't cluttered, i don't know what is. she said it's getting to the point where she's getting ready to move on.)

then i like how multiply doesn't just add bling to the initial structure, but it adds solid functional pieces that fit in well with the original -- so instead of throwing some necklaces around the skeleton's neck, they're adding skin to the hand, or better yet, bionic technology to the hand. ;-) so many sites put up their skeleton and they don't think about the fact that some muscles, skin, etc. might help.

rezashakiba wrote on Mar 24

Imagine one day the tribe CEO tells himself: "hey let check out our popularity in google and found out how people think about our great service" and eventually reach to this post...

I can hear now "who did that marketing thing..... " :D

barefootmeg wrote on Mar 24

yeah, the person that sent out the email needs to get some retraining on how to relate to customers. ;-)

dunadanlord wrote on Mar 24

I'd tried Xanga before, looked at Tribe.net when I had to leave Yahoo. Glad I didn't go with Tribe.net

danbirchall wrote on Mar 24

Huh, back when I was on Tribe.net (before bailing for here) I don't remember seeing instability...

barefootmeg wrote on Mar 24

danbirchall said

Huh, back when I was on Tribe.net (before bailing for here) I don't remember seeing instability...

i suppose it's a new feature that they added after you left... as are the orphans.

hanzrobin wrote on Mar 24

I've heard of Tribe.net but only in passing...never did check it out; glad I didn't now.

This is funny. I agree with Psychotic...similar to Yahoo!

Instability a new feature? roflol

fugitive247 wrote on Mar 24

barefootmeg said

then you throw a hundred bajillion apps on it

w00t- Yay for insomnia! My sleep-deprived brain originally read the line above as "...a hundred bajillion apes..." I need IV espresso, stat!

barefootmeg wrote on Mar 24

fugitive247 said

...a hundred bajillion apes

see? that's when it gets really bad is when they add apes on top of the apps. first you're getting bit by vampires and people are throwing sheep at you, then the apes come in and start flicking their boogers at you. it's just bad, all around. ;-)

michaeljwise wrote on Mar 24

Think of it this way. They're doing you a favor by reminding you that NOW would be a really good time to back up your stuff to somewhere else....

Aloha mai Nai`a!

thedudeoforkut wrote on Mar 24

WOW!! Just one of my words leads to that diatribe? Amazing! :-P

kashka wrote on Mar 24

clean your house if you have nothing more to do than this

barefootmeg wrote on Mar 24

thedudeoforkut said

WOW!! Just one of my words leads to that diatribe? Amazing! :-P

sometimes diatribes are just waiting to happen (like the ones my mom leaves on every one of my posts that's not a photo album of the kids :-P ).

loser1980 wrote on Jun 17

If you've used tribe.net you know how it's the best social networking site out there. Other than those other sites that use social networking lightly, tribe.net is set up mainly for networking and self promotion comes second. It's better to have reason to use tribe.net to see its functionality. You can go setup a page and just let it sit like myspace or facebook, but you don't have things like comment posts, or useless applications. You'd go to tribe to talk with people about interests you have in common. I don't pay a subscription for tribe.net but it is an extremely useful service worth paying for if you're inclined to do so. I felt that your review was unfair since you've never taken the time to appreciate the qualities of tribe.net but rather just bash their e-mail. Their e-mail was actually honest and to the point. If people want tribe.net to keep going then they were going to have to start charging. Giving the option to let people stay on for free was a smart choice since they'd probably lose a lot of people that didn't have the budget for it. On another note, now that they do have a premuim service, they still have a lot of downtime. That's disappointing.

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 17

loser1980 said

If you've used tribe.net you know how it's the best social networking site out there.

since you've used it, could you give me a brief comparison to multiply?

are there unlimited photo uploads?
how are you alerted to contacts' posts and replies on their posts?
what is the video upload limit?
what are the groups like? are their sub-admin positions? what kinds of abilities do admins have vs. sub-admins?
what are the blogging tools like and what is the size limit for attachments to posts?

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 17

so i just went to tribe.net to see if i could answer some of those questions myself and got:

"We are performing unscheduled maintenance. ETA for return of the site is 3:45pm PST. "

lovely.

mcpierce wrote on Jun 17

barefootmeg said

so i just went to tribe.net to see if i could answer some of those questions myself and got:

"We are performing unscheduled maintenance. ETA for return of the site is 3:45pm PST. "

lovely.

Wasn't 3:45p PST about 2 hours ago?

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 17

um... are they based in hawaii, maybe? cali time would have been 4:59 when i saw the note. so they'd have to be west of that.

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 17

oh, wait. RETURN time. i didn't catch that. maybe they mean tomorrow?

i just refreshed the page and now it says, "We are performing unscheduled maintenance. ETA for return of the site is 12:00am PST. "

thedudeoforkut wrote on Jun 17

barefootmeg said

sometimes diatribes are just waiting to happen (like the ones my mom leaves on every one of my posts that's not a photo album of the kids :-P ).

I am going to start stealing plays from your mom's play book and tell you to clean your house from now on, you non-heathen!. :-p

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 17

wow. i tried it again and it still says it won't be up until 12:00 am. i thought that must have been a mistake.

has multiply ever, EVER been down that long? ever?! i would hope that they're making some major, major upgrades during this time, but the fact that the original announcements said this was unscheduled maintenance makes me doubt that.

mcpierce wrote on Jun 18

barefootmeg said

has multiply ever, EVER been down that long? ever?!

Yes, but only one or two times that I can remember. When they had issues with their data center in, I think, Florida a few years back I was unable to get online for a day.

summerstorms wrote on Jun 19

I'm a Tribe.net member, and they've been down a LOT lately, like right now, for instance. I got here because I Googled "Tribe.net always down" to see what other people might be saying. I'm guessing that Loser1980 did the same thing recently, and that's how discussion here got reactivated. ;-) In any case, I kind of get the impression that Multiply and Tribe are set up to do slightly different things. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Multiply built largely around photo and video posting and image sharing? Tribe isn't; it's built around discussion and being a forum/clearinghouse for information among particular groups (called, oddly enough, tribes). The ability to post photos and such on their site is secondary to the communication aspects entailed, whereas here on Multiply those priorities are reversed. So to compare the two sites directly is rather like comparing apples and oranges. That said, however, I do think that Tribe.net A) really does need to get its instability problems fixed, B) needs to do so while still maintaining free memberships, and C) really had its head up its collective arse when it sent out the email referenced in the initial post.

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 19

summerstorms said

I kind of get the impression that Multiply and Tribe are set up to do slightly different things.

i got that impression also when perusing Tribe.net recently. (after it finally came back online. grrrr.)

my initial thought is that it reminds me a lot of orkut, but it looks nicer. i looked through several of the groups (that i don't ever remember joining but which seemed to have added me all the same) and they were all dead except for one.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Multiply built largely around photo and video posting and image sharing?

i'd say that's inaccurate. multiply is (cheasy line to follow) "for sharing your lives with friends and family." so yes, there's photo sharing (with unlimited uploads), video sharing (with size limits similar to youtubes), and recipe sharing, but there are also very good blogging tools, active groups, and an inbox system that makes deep and solid conversations possible in a way that i've found in no other social networking site online.

Tribe isn't; it's built around discussion and being a forum/clearinghouse for information among particular groups (called, oddly enough, tribes).

i'd say this points to one of the other key differences. though multiply does have groups, similar to the tribes, it also has personal pages that allow conversations that cover much broader spectrums of people. i don't know what it's like on tribe.net, but my experience on orkut was that we'd all join groups of things that we were interested in. then we'd have a conversation that often went something like this, "i think A." "... yeah, i think A too." "yup. this is the A group and i'm an A, too." then a troll would come along and start shouting "Z! Z! Z!" and the conversation would get livelier as all the A's either contracted the Z-er or complained about it. and that was just about it.

but on multiply i'll post A and i have friends and family that are B, C, D, etc. making for a much more interesting conversation.

The ability to post photos and such on their site is secondary to the communication aspects entailed, whereas here on Multiply those priorities are reversed.

again, that's inaccurate. the reverse is true. the multiply inbox is different than anything i've found on any other site. other sites have since tried to copy the feed idea, but none do it as well as multiply. it's this inbox that makes communication easy and frequent. you don't just keep up with friend's initial posts, but the conversations that follow as well.

thanks for the thoughts!

i'd like to hear more about how the tribes work. what's possible there? how do they run? what are the strengths and weaknesses. while multiply has great personal tools, the groups have always lagged behind a bit. they have a lot of the same functionality that personal pages, but they need more group specific tools. Rumor is those are coming... soon, hopefully.

summerstorms wrote on Jun 19

Well, for one thing, the groups I'm in on Tribes don't get trolls. And we do a lot more than just sit around agreeing with one another. Of course, I credit that to the types of groups I joined there, and not to Tribe.net itself.

Secondly, I've found nothing here on Multiply that I would consider analogous to the Tribe group discussions. I don't use either site for blogging (I have a LiveJournal and a Blogspot blog for doing that); what I use Tribe.net for is primarily to stay in touch with people, news and information pertinent to a couple of particular hobbies I'm involved with and which have a fairly strong presence on that site. Again, I can't get that on Multiply, because there is either no presence or very little presence here that I've found for those groups. And the Multiply inbox is also inadequate to reproduce what I go to Tribes for. So the two entities are still basically apples and oranges. Neither is intrinsically better than the other (except, of course, in terms of uptime) because they serve different needs and audiences. Rather like a spoon being no better or worse than a fork, it all depends upon what you're trying to accomplish.

On Tribe.net, anyone can start a group, and that person becomes the group moderator. Others can join the group, and take part in the discussions that occur there. Some discussions are livelier than others. For example, I'm interested in home brewing of beer and mead, and there are several tribes built around that hobby. Most of them aren't hotbeds of discussion, though. Some see new posts every couple of days, while in others the discussion is far more sporadic. I'm also involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism (an organization devoted to medieval recreation and historical research), and belong to a number of tribes related to that hobby. Most of them are pretty busy, with enjoyable discussions and no small amount of genuine community feeling. (There are a number of people there whom I happen to know outside the internet, too.) The SCA has a major annual event coming up in about six weeks, and so us folks in the SCA Tribes are in a tizzy of making plans and sharing details and asking for or giving advice on preparations... all of which will culminate in a great many of us sitting down together in late July and early August at a campground in Pennsylvania and interacting face to face for a couple of weeks. (Now you know why I'm so irritated with Tribe.net's extreme amounts of downtime of late.)

When you join a particular Tribe, you can take part in any and all discussions there. It doesn't, however, mean that everyone in that Tribe gets added to your friends network. You add people to your friends network yourself. You can use your Tribe homepage for blogging, photo sharing, etc. if you want, but not everyone does that. Lots of us are more into the messageboard functions than the personal page aspect, though some are equally interested in both. Myself, I'm the messageboard type... I do very little with my homepage there. (Though I do feed one of my other blogs to it, and I have a few photos up.)

So I still see Multiply and Tribe as having different objectives, with Multiply being more about personal pages and the like and Tribe being more about group communication.

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 19

Well, for one thing, the groups I'm in on Tribes don't get trolls.

yes, i haven't seen much in the way of trolls on multiply either. i think that was a particular problem of orkut and that would have been 4 years ago. not sure what it's like over there anymore.

I've found nothing here on Multiply that I would consider analogous to the Tribe group discussions.

which groups on multiply have you looked at so far and how did they differ?

On Tribe.net, anyone can start a group, and that person becomes the group moderator. Others can join the group, and take part in the discussions that occur there. Some discussions are livelier than others.

that describes groups on multiply pretty accurately as well.

When you join a particular Tribe, you can take part in any and all discussions there. It doesn't, however, mean that everyone in that Tribe gets added to your friends network. You add people to your friends network yourself.

right. same here. in fact, that same paragraph sounds very similar to multiply except that people seem to really like their home pages here. it would be interesting to ask people where they spend more time -- personal pages or groups. i feel like i'm about 50/50 but to be honest, i probably spend more time in group discussions.

there is a homebrew group here on multiply and a society for creative anachronism group also, but they're both pretty small.

summerstorms wrote on Jun 19

Well, that's my point. I've not seen anything on Multiply that's analogous to the sort of groups I'm part of on Tribe. Not a lot for homebrewers, nothing recent for SCA... hence my taking part there but not here, for those things. And since I'm not so much into the home page scene... *shrug*

Also, unless I'm missing something (and I suppose I could be) it seems I've had to dig down through more surface layers here at Multiply to get to the discussion boards. Then again, that could well be due to the fact that I simply haven't spent enough time here to set up a bunch of direct links like I have on the other site. I do, however, wonder why there ISN'T more of a presence here for the same sort of people I hang out with on Tribe, given that Tribe is experiencing so much downtime and such. If it continues, we will have to find someplace else to migrate to, possibly. I don't know if that would be here, but someplace, certainly.

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 19

summerstorms said

Also, unless I'm missing something (and I suppose I could be) it seems I've had to dig down through more surface layers here at Multiply to get to the discussion boards.

i think you're missing something. for me, i click once to see the list of updated messages (and new messages) and once to get to the actual message. given that the first click is what takes me "to the top" so to speak (so i can look down and see what all is going on) it's really only one click to get to the exact content that i'm interested in.

got any other interests besides those two? i'd love to find a group with something you're interested in so you could give it a whirl. then again, you could join the user support group for awhile just to get a sense of how groups work. it might not be as interesting as a group devoted to something you're more interested in, but it might be a good starting place.

barefootmeg wrote on Jun 23, edited on Jun 23

i went to join one of the christian discussion tribes and had to get approval to join. so in my introductory "hey add me" spiel i asked if that was normal when joining a tribe (that you had to be approved) or if they had set it to private for some reason. here's the response i got:

yeah, tribe goes down randomly for a few hours at a time, its normal- shouldndt be, but it is..
tribes are moderated depending on the tribe- some of us mods of Christian tribes have had some real problems with idiot trolls joining only for the purpose of starting trouble, and for a long time Christian talk was open to anyone, but i got sick of some really idiots. there are actually whole tribes devoted to giving us a hard time so it keeps things more mellow this way..

so it looks like tribe is as beset by trolls as orkut was back in the day. i wonder if this is predominantly because of size or because of the types of people that join one or the other service.

"whole tribes devoted to giving us a hard time" -- that sounds like tribal warfare to me. ;-) (dang, it's fun playing with the tribe theme.)

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