Ever since I first heard about Triberr, I felt in my gut that I just wouldn’t like it. A lot of that was because mostly what people talk about when they talk about Triberr is the automation aspect. I don’t really see the point in automating your social media presence. It has always seemed to me like the concept of sending a robot to go on a date for you. Why bother?
However, enough people I really like and really respect invited me in and told me that Triberr was great that I finally had to cave and give it a try. I am not so bull-headed that I am unwilling to change my mind, especially in scenarios where I haven’t actually gathered information my own self. So, a couple of weeks ago, I signed into Triberr for the first time.
I came into Triberr. I saw Triberr. And now I’ve left Triberr
There is one overriding factor that turned me off immediately upon entering into the world of Triberr, and that is that in order to unlock the full and most fun functionality of the site, you need to bring in six new people. I found that extremely uncomfortable. While you can invite people in because you think Triberr might help them out, the reality is that you’re inviting them in so that you can do cool stuff. Your ability to do cool stuff does not transition down, per se, to the people you invite in. It reminded me of Facebook games like Farmville where you can only do the next level of stuff if you get 17 more neighbors. Apart from the fact that I was waking up early to harvest fake grapes, that was one of the reasons I quit all of those Facebook games cold turkey. If I only want to ask people to do a certain number of things, inviting them into a sort of gaming situation is not what I want to use that “ask” for.
What I liked about Triberr is that it was my first taste of using something akin to Google Reader. I was lucky enough to get invited into an existing tribe, and I was exposed to a lot of peoples’ blogs that I do not tend to visit. I would have loved to expand that capacity, but again, I did not bring in enough people to be able to “inbreed” or add people already on Triberr into my tribe. I turned all automation off, and instead of using the site’s structure to tweet out posts I liked, I tweeted them out the way I always have – a brief comment on what I liked about the post, then the link to the post itself.
Did that make me a bad tribe member? Probably.
The real reason I have gotten out of Triberr, though, is the automation that so many people have talked about. It’s not a question of automating what I tweet out – I can control that till the cows come home. What you can’t control is whether other people automate their tweets or not. And this is where I differ from a lot of people in the online world. I am not after a high klout score, which is primarily what Triberr helps you with. If my posts get promoted on other platforms, I want to know that I am deserving of that credit. I know from my traffic numbers that most of the people who have been tweeting out my posts over the last few days have not been to my site at all. They have their Triberr accounts set to tweet all posts from the tribe x number of times a day, regardless, perhaps, of what those posts might be.
That makes me itchy. If I’m going to get promoted or credited or anything else, I want to know it’s because of me and what I’m doing.
One could argue that if people are willing to tweet out every post you write, you must be doing something right. One can also argue that if people are tweeting out your posts, you’re going to get exposed to other people, perhaps outside of the Triberr realm, who may not have seen your content otherwise. And those are fair points. However, the same is true on a daily basis. If you are new here and you tweet out this post to other people I don’t know, the same end result has occurred. Right?
Not saying it’s wrong. It’s just not right for me.
I have no problem with the fact that so many people are using Triberr and love it. I don’t think there is a right or wrong in this scenario. But for me and what I want to accomplish, it is not a good match. Maybe you are thinking you want to give it a try after this review for all of the reasons I just left. To each his or her own.
So what do you think? I’m interested in arguments for or against. I know there is a diversity of opinions, many of them passionate. Let’s talk about it!
Image by Aleksandra P. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/GiniMiniGi