Triberr is okay. It just isn’t for me.
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
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I’d looked at it as well, and never got as far as seeing there was the pyramid aspect of it. Still just the tenor of voices promoting it made me uncomfortable. It seems that my gut reaction was right.
I think it’s worth everyone checking out for him or herself. There may be facets of it I missed that you would catch. I’m glad I gave it a try so I have my own opinions to go on in the future 🙂
I struggle with Triberr a lot. I am in one Tribe (run by John Falchetto) and that tribe has great members who consistently produce great stuff.
The first tribe I was in was a poor fit for me. The other bloggers were not at my level in terms of writing ability, so I could not tweet their posts. I have everything set to manual with that tribe because the content was poor. There was one member of that tribe who curses in his posts for shock value – which is something I do not believe in doing. I curse on my blog only when it is warranted (like when blogging about something sexual for example)
Anyway, I think the idea behind Triberr is good. I promised myself I would give it a good six months and see if I want to continue. I have been very shy about approaching anyone to join my tribe because I don’t want others to think I don’t respect them.
Being in Triberr is a lot like being in that high school cafeteria and again I am trying so hard to fit in.
I don’t know if I have a future with Triberr, right now it is a marriage in name only 🙂
Hi Nancy,
You hit the nail on the head in terms of how to be a good tribe member. I set everything to manual as well, just because I didn’t want to automate. But if I opted not to tweet out a person’s post, was I ticking people off? What are the expectations? What is the Triberr etiquette? I didn’t like the feeling I got that you had better tweet out what everyone in your tribe is doing. Sometimes I post things on here more for my own recollection than anything else – I don’t need those posts tweeted all over the place 🙂 But again, that’s just me, maybe.
Margie,
I was so hoping you would write about your experience. I almost asked you about it a couple of days ago. Then, I got distracted by my tweet stream full of automated Triberr tweets. Sigh.
I’ve been using Triberr for 2 months now and I feel many of the sentiments you express. One o f the original intents was to have small tribes of 5-7 people working together to help each other grow this blogs. Unfortunately, people have abused the system and gone for a land grab. Tribes of 40-50 people are absurd and abusive to one’s followers.
There is going to come a time in the near future where a tool like http://proxlet.com/ is used by the masses to filter out noise. Not to diverge the conversation to Facebook, but that is exactly what they are trying to provide to the end user with one of their new features.
“Inbreeding” is very awkward indeed. I have successfully recruited 3 people out of 10 I asked. I feel like a used car salesman every time I ask. One called B.S. after being in the tribe for a day and quit. I can hardly blame him…Triberr has lost it’s original purpose and become more spammy than useful.
Results: My latest post (http://wevivify.com/2011/09/29/mass-propaganda/) was tweeted 9 times by tribe members. I thanked each member with a RT of their Triberr tweet hours later. The 18 total tweets yielded a whooping 7 page views.
By comparison, my own limited promotion (G+, FB. Twitter) yield over 100 page views. Did I mention Linkedin delivered 8 page views?
Maybe, the post does not deliver. Maybe, my tribes with their 100K+ reach are not my audience. Maybe, Triberr is not for me either.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
David
Triberr is the reason I’m rarely on twitter. And, like Margie, a lot of people I respect(ed) and like(d) were using it.
Triberr completely ruined my twitter experience. It’s a situation where the peeps autoposting may be giddy reading their own stats, but when you see the quality of folks leaving because of it – you have to wonder if there is any meaning behind the stats.
Because I don’t dip into my main feed very much the tweets haven’t disrupted my Twitter experience. But I did wonder what the etiquette is for thanking people who have automated their tweets. I always make it a big point to thank people for promoting my posts, but with those Triberr tweets going out, I wasn’t really feeling like those needed a thank you. Then people outside the tribe retweeted those tweets. Do you thank those people? It got to be confusing for me 🙂
Wow, what a great comment, David. Thank you for sharing all of that.
I think the big “conglomerate” tribes could be really interesting, but I think there need to be clear rules for those bigger groups. I think the leader of the tribe needs to try to make sure that people understand what is hoped for/expected so that there isn’t any ambiguity or secret resentment.
I had heard that one advantage of Triberr is that it gets you more traffic, but like you, I did not find that to be the case. After looking at how the site works, I could tell that most people either have their settings to automate or they just go through and tweet posts based on the first line. My traffic remained virtually unchanged.
My Klout score, however, went up 2 points.
Interesting, eh? 🙂
Margie,
I am not in Triberr. Funny, no one invited me, or maybe no one needed me! No difference. I like Nancy’s comment “Being in Triberr is a lot like being in that high school cafeteria and again I am trying so hard to fit in.” I think we all know this experience. I used to say that the reason I was elected Student Body President was because I didn’t belong to any one clique!
I only want to talk about pryamids if someone is showing me their latest travel slides or if I am watching the news or taking a history or art history class. In life I have lost four (4) kind of dear friends because they became insulted that I didn’t want to become part of their pryamid. My heart starts to pound when someone offers to “do my makeup”!
I would like to think that these “on-line social groups” somehow come together naturally, maybe attend the same event, get introduced, have a little something in common…and meet occasionally on a Saturday morning at Margie’s place. I like to dream, too.
Judy
Real-life meetings? Ewwwww 🙂 That would be *so* much fun it would be crazy!
I don’t think this is really a pyramid scheme because the advantages of one person don’t stream down to other people. If I get 7 people in, I get to unlock some of the benefits, but I don’t think those drip down to the other people in my tribe. That part is kind of troubling to me.
Sorry you didn’t get invited in – I really did not feel comfortable asking people =/
Margie,
I totally get where you are coming from. I’ve never really been comfortable with Triberr – especially the bazillion tweets that seem to have flooded my stream on a minute by minute basis. Interestingly, some of those bazillion tweets eased when I unfollowed a bunch of people back in August. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on a link that flew by…and still haven’t.
When I first was invited, I thought it would give me a bit more exposure. Like David’s experience, I received more visits when I posted my own link outside of the tribe. I received more comments outside of the tribe as well.
I’m pretty sure I’m done w/Triberr, especially since they started “ranking” posts. I find that aspect totally insulting to be honest. (I know they’ve been doing it for a while, but I haven’t been to the site in a long time and just saw it last week). I’m really tired of all the “scoring” (which turns into “gaming”) that’s happening all over the place. I don’t need a “score” for my blog posts, thankyouverymuch.
Now, if I could only get up the nerve to put my blog posts on G+ 🙂
Great post Margie, as always. Love how you always “shoot from the hip.”
Sherree
Sherree-
When you find out, let me know.
Yeah, I didn’t really explore the “Karma” aspect of things, but it can definitely be a way to game the system.
I did find that some people I did not know started visiting my blog based on the tweets I was getting from Triberr, and I hope those folks come back. I also know that there were some folks tweeting out my posts in an automated fashion who would never visit my site, most likely. They don’t really like my style or what I’m about, so maybe that made me particularly itchy about seeing them tweet my stuff 🙂
Hi Margie,
As you know, I love you and respect you. I’m glad you gave it a go.
I agree, Triberr isn’t for everybody. I even wrote a post explaining who we’re building Triberr for, and who isn’t a good fit.
The automation piece was a huge selling point at first (we launched in March 2011), but we’ve had the manual mode since May and you can even set manual mode on per tribe member basis.
Now the biggest selling point of Triberr is that it has turned into an amazing network of Bloggers. The fact that they can tap into each other’s audience is a bonus.
In either case, I’m glad you gave it a go and perhaps after we make few tweaks and add few new features, you’ll consider coming back. We’d love to have you 🙂
Hi Dino,
I really have mad respect for you, sir. Triberr has been one of those polarizing issues in the online world and you have always maintained (so far as I can see) a professional decorum, even with people who threw out plain old hate mail.
I definitely can see how Triberr could become something I would revisit, and I can see the smarts behind it. I think for someone like me who finds it hard to make “asks” online, it’s a tough nut to crack, and for someone who wants more comments than tweets, it also is not a 100% match. Like I said though, my objectives in the online world do not match those of a lot of other people.
Keep me posted on changes – I am keeping an open mind!
Your post pretty well sums up my thoughts. I gave it a go after some friends said it brought traffic to their blogs, but I wasn’t seeing it and didn’t like the autotweeting as a give or receiver (though it was a kick to see so many RTs…that is until I reminded myself they were automated). I’d love to see a Triberr option where people could feed it what they think are really great post (let’s face it, not all are) and then I’d manually decide.
@Margie – I am glad you wrote about this. I had been very curious about Triberr too, since I see tweets about it often. When I poked around the site, it didn’t ‘feel’ welcoming to me, and looked like a game to me. And oddly, it seemed like it wasn’t the place for highly narrow niche hobby blogs, whether that’s related to coffee, knitting, Ikea or whatever … And I too pretty much ignore tweets in my tweet stream that have the word Triberr in them.
And Margie, the bottom line is still the same: YOUR blog will be a success because of your content. That’s true of everyone’s blog, but look at your blog. It’s beautifully written, and you’re getting plenty of comments, and you have an engaged following on twitter. That already IS a success.
Your last paragraph says it all.
Great points all the way around, Melody, although perhaps the other side of the coin on your first point is that if you find other people in your niche you could create a really strongly oriented tribe just around that topic. That is where Triberr, like Paper.Li, could come in handy for businesses.
As for the latter, I am very fortunate that my blog is evolving the way it is. I would not change a thing. At the feet of people like you who come and leave great comments is where the credit must go!
Great post. I agree with you Margie. I am part of a fairly new Tribe, and the initial automation felt spam-my. This has been toned down, and a lot of the automation has ceased. We are a small tribe, so it’s not difficult to read each other’s posts, yet.
I agree with Sherree, that I probably get more hits from linking outside of the tribe, but because I am a newbie my posts probably reach a few streams that I wouldn’t normally pop up in.
We shall see…
It definitely is all stuff that needs to be weighed and measured on an individual basis. I think proclaiming that Triberr is all good or all bad is where the conversation has most gone astray.
Thanks for the great comment!
“Apart from the fact that I was waking up early to harvest fake grapes…”
Oh my gosh I just needed a laugh and that was it!
(And a well-crafted argument as always. )
It really freaked me out. Those games are life-eaters!!
Thank you, Margie, for this post. I was invited and encouraged to join and eventually did join. I was out within 12 hours. Did not like the gaming aspect at all.
Learned a good bit reading what you wrote, along with all the great comments you generated.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Susie. Glad it was helpful 🙂
I’m a big, big fan of Dino and Dan, but I’ve cut back dramatically on Triberr. I kept one tribe open of bloggers who I read and tweet anyway. I did have five tribes and had them all on manual so I could read and tweet after I’d vetted the blog posts. After three days of travel, I was so far behind that I had to rethink my strategy. So now I only have that one tribe and I know anything they produce is something I’m happy to promote.
it does get to be a lot, just as it can with a Reader or with any other means of keeping track of posts. People are writing a lot these days!! But I know whose blogs I can rely on and I visit those as often as possible. My means of finding posts I might not have found otherwise is to skim my home feed and see what posts other people are talking about. So far it seems to be serving me well.
I guess I’m somewhat neutral; I’m in three and started one. As far as increasing comments I don’t think that has happened. On one tribe the ‘chief’ is MIA and we don’t really support each other as a group. The second, the ‘chief’ is very active but as a whole, we don’t support each other as a group. The third group is Gini’s and I can’t tell if I’m the group that made the cut with the posts she is happy to promote or not. Regardless, some the people I support in that group were people I was already hanging with; I’m not even sure if some of that group is even blogging anymore.
In summation, I don’t think it is helping me tremendously but it certainly isn’t hurting me so since I’m kind of a ‘just show up’ guy anyway I don’t feel the urge to pro-actively drop out. However, my platform is somewhat different in being primarily a ‘personal’ blog for now I don’t think it could do much damage regardless of how it was promoted.
@bdorman264 as always, Bill, your comment is astute and wonderful 🙂 Thanks for doing that thing you do.
Hi Margie. I think you explained your reasons for leaving Triberr in this post very clearly. I’m sorry you didn’t find it to your liking. My experience has been, and continues to be, very different. But then I am in a tribe with people I trust and respect and converse with almost daily. I read their posts (and would read them anyway without Triberr) and this tool has actually introduced me to other bloggers I hadn’t really read yet.
I kind of love that it makes everything easily available to me, which is invaluable in the chaos of my life. I think any of the tools we use in social media can be criticized. And probably should be so that they and we continue to grow and improve. I find I don’t even notice the games and don’t care about the blogs being ranked. In social media, and in much of my life, I pay attention to the things that resonate and overlook things like online games. Just doesn’t matter to me. That there are people who are using it to try and game the system doesn’t surprise me. There are people staying up late at night trying to figure out how to game every new tool, every new social network…their loss. But it’s human nature.
What does matter, is meeting new people, reading new information, being exposed to new blogs and learning. Sharing among small groups, talking, growing–all of this is happening in one of my three groups and will, I hope, happen in the remaining two as they grow slowly and thoughtfully. What also matters is communication and respect between people who know and like each other. And this can take place using the Triberr tool–and in other social media. Or it can be overlooked. Sometimes surprisingly.
You mention your discomfort with having people automate the sharing of your work. Yet as writers and publishers we have no control over what happens after we publish a post. Which is part of what is scary to me about blogging at all and what has held me back for such a long time in my own writing. However, the simple act of sharing a link to your own post releases it and off it goes into the ether, into other peoples’ hearts and minds and from them to whomever they share it with. And it so it can be using this tool as well. And Triberr tribes can be close knit and supportive groups of people who share the work they respect. It’s just a tool. But one that I have appreciated using.
@allenmireles Hi Allen! The fact is that self-promotion in general is something I’m terrible at. i still find it ridiculous that I have a site, not to mention that it’s called “me” dot com. I seldom promote my own posts more than two times a day. If it’s someone else’s post, I could promote it 2-3 times more often. I just have that MIdwestern sense of “Don’t toot your own horn,” and yes, I’m aware that social media is a TERRIBLE match for that kind of personality. But it’s good…it’s making me face that with which I am uncomfortable.
And you’re right, of course. Once someone tweets out my post, it gets a life of its own. Maybe people retweet that person not because they like my post but rather because they want to get on that person’s good side. I guess Triberr just removed the wool from my eyes a bit – the way I normally do things, I usually have a better sense of who read my post and liked it. With Triberr I got a lot of tweets from people who didn’t even visit my site. I found that troubling.
But of course you are right. There is a lot of good to Triberr. I can see how it can be a valuable tool. I just want to watch how it matures a bit before I jump back in.
Margie –
Thank you for being transparent about your experience and what Triberr has to offer. I am a young blogger and nervous about potential blogging mistakes I can make, as well as searching for how to become the most successful. The balance is a terribly scary line as you read about numerous things Google will punish you for.
My immediate hesitation with Triberr is the duplicate content across numerous sites. I understand they advertise this not to be an issue, but of course they wouldn’t say otherwise.
With your added input I am reluctant to try Triberr and appreciate your knowledge and experience.