Elliot on Tribe's topics - tribe.net

OpenSocial?

donivan — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:00:52 GMT

Is tribe going to implement the OpenSocial API announced by Google?

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

As the moderator of a new tribe...

Bounty — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 01:32:05 GMT

I am utterly confused with the flagging I'm getting. ALL pictures have been flagged, even "private" photos. So far, most of the interactive speech has not been "flagged" but this seems personal. What am I to do? None of the articles flagged are offensive. It appears the "flagged" image just stays.....and stays..... I want them removed.....please. Bounty

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

Hello I am the founder of a Moment4peace in the Middle East.

Keylumin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:05:25 GMT

I ran for President of the United States and for Governor of California. I believe Tribe.net has the potential to heal the world, if we were networked and focused. If we could focus all the good and positive energy.

I would like to let everyone know that their is a way that they can help the peace process. that the peace process can be more, than watching the news and hoping it gets better. I'd like to see a million people everyday, praying, focusing, visualizing for peace in the Middle East at 8:00 every evening. Can you help me, do you know if it's possible, to get authorization, to post on every tribe, on tribe.net, and around the world.

Yes I came up with a great idea, but if it doesn't effectively reach enough people, then it will be of no consequence. Can you image how powerful it would be, if friends told friends, and they told their friends, and we all sent energy to the planet at the same time. Visualizing 8:00 PM.

Please feel free to join http://tribes.tribe.net/moment4peace

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 1 reply

It's true.

elliot — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:33:14 GMT

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/24/is-mark-pincus-back-at-tribe/

Stay tuned for a bevy of most-requested changes. I predict it's going to feel like everything old is new again around here.

Those of you who know Mark know that whether or not he's been formally in charge of Tribe, he's always been a fierce advocate of its users. I look forward to seeing what comes next.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 6 replies

Elliot. I can't believe it

J-Rad — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 04:09:39 GMT

Thanks for everything.The work you did changed my life. Let us know where you end up.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 4 replies

Elliot...

Rex_Dixon — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 13:28:57 GMT

Hey man, I think they gave you the shaft after all your hardwork.

Rex

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

Redesign the Members icon, win fame -- and 100 clams.

elliot — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 23:45:57 GMT

One of the most-repeated pieces of feedback that people gave after our site redesign was that the Members icon (up there in the masthead) didn't reflect what they thought Tribe stood for. So, we're opening the door for anyone interested in making their mark on Tribe in a very real way. Show us your best designs for the Members icon, and you could win a spot for your icon in the masthead. There's also a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate for grabs, to sweeten the deal.

The full details are at the Members Icon Design Contest tribe, but here are the basics:

- Enter your design by Friday, April 7th, 2006
- Enter by uploading one image per design to the Members Icon Design tribe
- Enter as many times as you like
- You must be a member of Tribe to enter

Go here to find out more:

http://tribes.tribe.net/membersicon/

We'll also be sending out a personal message about this, but if you've got your Message Center set up with the iron fist of Ignore, then you can see the full text here:

http://tribes.tribe.net/membersicon/thread/7a89e3c1-2561-4c91-a04a-97d59d0c31e3

*Note: Amazon.com is not affiliated with this contest in any way. We just like their gift certificates.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

A few words about the new flagging and mature controls.

elliot — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:55:09 GMT

I've been hanging back, watching the ruckus about the new flagging controls that we here in the warehouse have been working so hard on for the past few months. Let me encapsulate my own reaction with a few words:

"Try it, and see if you like it."

That's it. Sure, the prospect of your content being taken down is a difficult one to swallow, particularly in light of the permissive environment that we've fostered here at Tribe. But here's what I know about the people that have worked on the features in question: they're not interested in censoring the great discussions that go on here, and they're also quite smart. So I trust them to figure out the best way to deal with the various pressures that are driving these changes. Give the features a try, and see how they affect your overall experience. Are you still able to share your thoughts? Can you get your message out to those who want to hear it? If there is any conflict between a content poster and viewer, are there reasonable outlets for resolution? If you don't like the way things are going, let us know. Some things we'll be able to change, and some we won't. But if you've been here a while, you'll know that when it's all all possible, we'll make it right.

One last thing: please don't hold back if you have feedback on the features. But be respectful. Whether or not you like every individual thing that the employees of Tribe do for you, there is no reason to get personal, petty, or profane. They are here late every night, and sometimes very early in the morning, trying hard to build a terrific product for an expansive and varied audience. That is the best thing about working here.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 25 replies

RED

Amped — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:52:01 GMT

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 9 replies

The New Tribe.

elliot — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 20:27:25 GMT

Since Wade's let the January cat out of the bag -- see http://tinyurl.com/akmoh -- I thought I'd open a direct channel for talking about the larger concepts that are driving what is going to be the largest redesign of the site, ever.

Yes, ever.

A little background on me: I'm the designer of tribe. I'm responsible for just about everything you see here, from both a visual and user interface design standpoint -- and on a few features, too. I've been here since design started in early 2003, and hopefully I can offer you some context on the reasoning behind our decisions.

My goals with the new design were to accomplish the following:

- Better communicate to the casual user what Tribe is all about
- Simplify access to major sections of content (top-level navigation)
- Organize buttons and other controls in more consistent locations, so everything is with easy and familiar reach, from page to page
- Standardize our page layouts
- Lay a foundation for a simpler, expandable member experience (starting with the My Tribe.net section)

We decided to tackle several unrelated, yet significant issues as well:

- Make content posted to tribes easier to discover
- Find better places for ads on discussion topics and other pages
- Address inconsistencies between content item types
- Accommodate users who browse tribe with large displays
- Assist power users who are members of many tribes, like to browse photos, track posts in their networks, etc.

The overall result (of which you're getting a small peek at now) has been to take all of the varied functionality that we've built into Tribe, and to flatten it out a bit, and move some things around. We've made a conscious effort to remove hardly anything at all. Instead, the focus has been on exposing everything that you can do on the site: providing better views onto content, and new ways to slice and dice information so that you can get at something that interests you.

I'll let you in on a little secret: the stuff you'll see in January is just the beginning. What we have in mind is too large to put into a single release, and so we've scheduled many of the appearance-oriented modifications to come out first. This will make room for us to insert the more ambitious changes a bit later (and time for users to get used to getting around the site).

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 35 replies

BUY BYE

Amped — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 21:12:09 GMT

keep on pushing guys.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

Poll: would you be willing to pay for premium service

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 01:35:42 GMT

Please limit your responses here to a simple Yes or No.

A poll may help managment to choose to offer a premium service if we can demonstrate willingness to pay.

My vote is YES!

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 9 replies

Could you...

-robin — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:21:26 GMT

maybe give us back a way to access our mail with one click from anywhere. maybe have a link to the message center up with the hi, -robin and that tiny little square with my profile pic that leads me to my homepage.

there are so many times when i want to jump right from where i am into my message center. i don't know if it's hard to do, but i wouldn't think it was that hard...

thanks alot,
-robin

if you could just say whether this seems likely or not, that would be great!

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 15 replies

Elliot, Here is a letter from Omnithoughts.com, They are creating Tribe's replacement

Foxy — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:21:55 GMT

Open letter to the owners, mods, etc. of the old busted thing.

Dear tribe.net mods and owners: You have consistenly ignored the massive resistance to the changes you have made. Almost no one likes it. It's inefficient, unattractive, and miserable to use. Yet, despite the biggest backlash I've seen since Bush was appointed, you plod on as if everything is just fine.
It used to be a wonderful grassroots online community. Sure, every community has it's trolls and bad apples, but for the most part it was a place for all the freaks, burners, hippies, punks, goths, yippies, vegans, omnivores, activists, and everyone else to gather and share openly, freely, and comfortably. Now it's has become MySpace.
Several people, including myself, bit our tongues and offered very reasonable suggestions for how to make it work for both you and us. That there is even a "you" and "us" is a problem in itself. It should have stayed "we".
You ignored every constructive suggestion, and I believe you are only shooting yourself in the foot.
Please rethink your actions, lest you lose everyone that made tribe.net worth visiting.

And since you won't, we're moving on.

Anyone, (including you Elliot!) who wants to join goto:

http://omnithoughts.com

I thought you'd like to know,

Sincerely,

Foxy!

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 8 replies

wtf is tom on tribe now!!!!!!!!!

chlorophil — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 09:54:36 GMT

wheres tom at ??
yey its all about good clean fun!!

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

It's all my fault!

unsubscribed — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:00:33 GMT

Hi, I'm unsubscribed!

Since they keep unsubscribing my profile, I wondered if tribe didn't like my profile...

That's not it at all!

They just want me to call myself unsubscribed! Hey, thats what they keep naming me!

So when you see a post from unsubscribed, is it me? is it someone else?... who knows?

I'm unsubscribed! I'm the unforgiven tribe'er!
Unsubscribed! the souce of everything nasty on tribe!

It's all my fault!

Blame me!

Here I am!

I'm unsubscribed!

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

Tribe Networks, Inc. should work with tribe.net members

stevland — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:34:26 GMT

(from my blog...)

It is exciting to see my Photoshop-enhanced tribe logos catching on. It certainly shows the present discontentment on tribe.net.

I think that people are still upset by the censorship issue-- and in many ways are still waking up to it. It is one thing to hear about the new TOU as a concept; but now that content is actually being removed, it is very upsetting.

Beyond that, the new layout changes reflect a company that has been very successful at building up a user base; but now shows disregard to its customers.

It is important to remember that Tribe Networks, Inc. provides the tools for its users-- us-- and *we* provide the content.

It is a pretty fair deal, in my opinion. Actually, they are quite lucky!

Collectively we have made an enormous web site that spans thousands of categories, subject and interests; is rich in content and endlessly entertaining. They get to throw up a few ads and make some money. We do not profit at all but simply entertain ourselves.

So why does Tribe Networks, Inc. seem to have contempt for its members? Why can they not accommodate our wishes?

The censorship issue is a tricky one; for now, let’s focus on the new site design. *That* is something that Tribe Networks, Inc. could easily address. No government agency is forcing them to make the site ugly and unfriendly. So why do they insist on punishing us?

I estimate that 95% of tribe.net users would be delighted if they simply reverted back to the old layout. Very few people were complaining about the site design previous to the changes of January 19th, 2006.

Elliot et al-- you guys make a mistake. It happens! Step back. Don’t worry about losing face. We love tribe!

I hope that, in the future, Tribe Networks, Inc. will recognize that the value of the company is based entirely on the web site. As it is tribe.net members that create the content of the site, it is in the company’s best interest to work with the members and implement changes that will satisfy all parties.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

The End of Advertising.

elliot — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 20:11:20 GMT

For a couple of years here, I've been working on an idea that I like to call The End of Advertising As We Know It. Basically, it's where I see people like Google headed, and I think we can offer a better experience.

THE PROBLEM
Advertising is annoying, but in a very specific way: it annoys people only when it's poorly targeted, and that's because it's wasting time. And currently in this world, the vast majority of advertising is poorly targeted. I don't have any real numbers here, but I'd guess that less than 5% (perhaps way less) of advertising reaches its intended target -- those who will either remember the advertised message or actually act positively on it.

(Please keep in mind that I'm talking about all forms of advertising at this point -- not just ads you see on the web.)

The problem isn't the advertisements themselves. The problem is a nonspecific distribution system. Currently, targeting is very crude -- and it must be. This is because fine levels of detail about each potential recipient are out of reach of the networks that distribute the ad messages. It's not that the people that create and publish (and these are two different groups, by the way) truly desire to annoy the 95% of people that see their ads and feel no relevance to them. That wastefulness costs everyone -- it costs time, energy, and money. Nevermind the aggravation. But it's worth it to hit the five people in a hundred that think, "That is just what I needed, right now! Where do I sign?"

In many ways, the industry is still working in the days of basic statistics: creating general theories from patterns of data sampled from very small sections of a larger population. If you could go back in time and as Gallup about his Poll, or Nielsen about his Ratings, I bet you'd hear them both say, "Well, whippersnapper, my work is only an estimate based on asking a few thousand people out of millions. It's a good way to guess at something, because it's impossible to know people's preferences, short of storing all that information and asking them every once in a while. Statistics, man! it's the future! Because there will never be a warehouse on Earth that could store all of those punchcards!"

A SOLUTION
Well, it's the 21st century and it turns out that not only do we have the warehouse, we have the data terminals in front of just about every recipient. I speak of course of The Internet. How can we make it useful? How could we solve the problem of poor targeting, and make it so that each person likes every (or nearly every) advertisement that they see?

Let's take a look at what would make for good targeting. I believe that if you wanted to target the majority of advertisements successfully, you'd need to know at least the following:

1. Where the recipient is generally physically located
2. Basic stats about the recipient (gender, age, etc.)
3. What the recipient is interested in (hobbies, etc.)
4. The recipient's tastes in clothes, music, food, and other like items
5. Perhaps places and things the recipient already enjoys (and maybe even dislikes, so you can steer away from ads about those)
6. Whether or not the recipient is looking to solve certain problems (because after all, each ad is a possible solution to a problem)

With all that information about each person, and a sufficiently characterized inventory of ads, the prospect of specifically targeted ad messages becomes promising. That college kid who has 6GB of electronic music MP3s and likes to travel? You can tell him about the Winter Music Festival in Miami. The stay-at-home mom with serious craft skills and more spare time, now that the kids are at school? You can tell her about the online market for hand-knit goods.

Astute readers may notice that the above numbered list fits five major categories, and that each of these categories of information are already available on Tribe:

- Geographical relevance (1): our local focus
- Biographical information (2,4): user profiles
- Affinities (3,5): tribes
- Ratings (5): reviews and recommendations
- Needs (6): listings and requests

With these five categories, it becomes possible to put advertising in proper context, on a per-person basis, based on as much information as each individual is willing to share. We'll start out with your location (which is pretty much the baseline for non-member users) and then build from there. If you become a member, we'll take what we know about you (depending on what you're comfortable telling us) and show you some more items that you might find interesting.

I believe there is some external validation for all of this. In recent months, I have seen search engines and major online retailers build or purchase products that work along one or more of those five axes. I can only assume that they have the same goal: to better target their information, products or ads to potential consumers.

And it is the way things have always been: as buyers become more sophisticated in their awareness of markets and products, sellers are going to have to find better ways to get their messages across. The next step in the evolution of commerce will involve the refinement of this dialogue. More productive conversation to solve the buyer's problems, and fewer non sequitur, poorly-targeted messages.

DESIRED GOOD VS. NECESSARY EVIL
What I want to emphasize is that Tribe has never been intended to become a giant ad farm. Long-time users of Tribe will recall that we started out with no conventional display/banner advertising, and that when we started putting ads on pages, we explained that it was an experiment more than anything. We did not expect to make money from advertisements in the conventional sense.

For me, both of these sentiments still hold true. In the long run, we're not going to be in the business of interrupting content with the same conventional ads that everyone has to see. We are going to be in the business of placing information in the right place, for each specific user -- whether that information is a personal message, a group discussion, a listing for a used car that a friend is selling, or an ad for an online sale for flat-panel TVs.

What we've been doing here at Tribe for the last couple of years is working on this idea that when people come together and talk about things, transactions occur in a natural way. These transactions may not (and usually do not) involve money changing hands. But they do involve lots of good information. I believe another way to say this is that conversations generate leads. If we build a network that can distribute all items to the people that will be interested in them, then we'll have built an excellent system for distributing leads as well. And then the focus will turn to tuning the balance of ads/leads to make this a self-sustaining, and hopefully profitable business.

(When I say profitable, I mean it in several ways: profitable to users that save time and money, profitable to our bottom line as a company, and profitable by virtue of improving what I view to be a wasteful and irritating standard of distributing advertising vs. content. This is why I refer to this idea as The End of Advertising As We Know It: no more scattershot broadcasts of the same ads to the every person, with multiple impressions to press an unwanted message. Instead, fewer, more pleasing messages that are actually useful.)

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 4 replies

sane commentary on the new look

J-Rad — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 04:14:09 GMT

Wow, am I glad I found this tribe instead of the newlook tribe which is just getting ugly at this point. I appreciate their concerns and agree with many of the criticisms of the upcoming changes, but the tone has become unbecoming an evolved online society.

Having now read your previous comments in this tribe, I believe in and celebrate what your are trying to do here. I long ago labled social networking websites like tribe as examples of good internet, and credit it with dramatically changing the way I live my 3D life. I hope that it spreads beyond the San Francisco creative community who are already living a good part of what tribe is doing.

I appreciate the forum allowed here and would like to offer my thoughts on the new GUI in hopefully a more rational and sane matter knowing that you all have thought intelligently about what you are trying to do. I will refrain from commenting on the look except to say that red doesn't seem very inviting, but I like the layout of the top of the page and having the list of "my" pages accessable on the left.

My main criteria in judging the changes is whether I find it easier or harder to access the information I use on a daily basis. How many clicks It takes to get to a given page is vital to the usability and the thing I loved about the way tribe has been set up is that you were able to fit a lot of information onto the homepage. I understand that one of the goals is to make it easier for the more ludite amongst us and that the "old" page was too cluttered for those people, but I'm finding the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction.

The first and most important thing I look at is my tribes list. I have over 50 tribes, and read about a dozen every day. Some tribes fill up so fast that I can't keep up with them, and some have so little traffic that they live unread for months at a time. The new page provides such a comparably small amount of space for my list of tribes that I need to make 2 or 3 clicks to get to a specific tribe. The beauty of the old page was that it was all there. all of it. I could see the whole list.

The other potion of the homepage that I refer to is my friends list. Seeing who is online was what made tribe personal. having those faces changing daily and hourly reminded me of the friends I had and provided inspiration for get togethers and conversations. The new homepage seems devoid of any life. Its all words.

Providing more access to what my friends are posting is a very good idea, but I wonder if combining events, listings, blogs, and so on into one list doesn't do away with having seperate types of forums in the first place. What is the difference between a blog and an events listing if they show up in the same list? hard to way the pro and con on this one.

I very much appreciate the reformating of individual threads in tribes. Providing more width for them is an improvement. I 'm finding them much easier to read.

Trying to balance the wants and desires of new users and established users is a very difficult task and I don't envy the position you are in, but am glad you are taking a good hard look at it. The fear here amongst the rants I'm reading and one I share is that tribe is going to become a lowest common denominator website, stamping out what brought so many of here in the first place:the freedom of individuality and creativity. I think the key can be found in customization. Follow what you started in the last round of changes. bring the module format into the homepage. allow the basic user to only see a few tribes if they don't want to be overloaded. Allow the power user to have access to everything from one page. You could create "experience level" based templates as a starting point. your new page for the newbies, and a more exploded version for the power user. let the new user have at the top suggested friends and tribes, let the experienced amongst us to do away with that, or at least move it to the bottom, freeing up room.

Alright, that's my 2 cents.

thanks for what you are doing. you'll find the balance I'm sure

Jared

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 5 replies

Here's a win-win proposal

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 20:02:10 GMT

Why doesn't tribe simply offer paid accounts? It would help offset their expenses and would provide an option to people who want to have tribe the way it used to be (and should be IMHO).

Paid accounts could offer the following:

- No advertising

- password protected or "friends only" mature content

- a different TOU/TOS which severely limits tribe.net's rights to make use of user posted content (many of the artists here take severe umbrage to tribe's TOU on user poseted content...and there are a LOT of artists)

- perhaps throw in a few more profile styles

Many people don't like how tribe has changed and I believe most of them would be willing to pay a monthly fee to have the old tribe.net back. It's mutually helpful; a win-win situation. At least this way people would have a real option. Tribe can still have its free accounts with the ads and the new rules, and paid members can have relief from the same.

On the side, I really enjoy what tribe has been up until recently. It was a place that, for the most part, had much more maturity than LiveJournal and MySpace and also felt more like a community. I liked the idea that I could be free to be an adult and talk about adult things, have adult posts, etc. I didn't feel like anyone was trying to police me or play mommy.

However, like any community, when people feel that their community is changing for the worse, they will get vocal, and sometimes their courtesy and rationality departs, and I think you bear it well, Elliot. However, if no option is given to the great many people who feel they are losing the freedom that tribe used to have, then it may turn out that all you'll have is another MySpace, with legions of petulant teens posting nothing but useless fluff.

I believe the paid account idea would solve your concerns and those of the masses here, and I hope you take it into consideration. I've tried the new format, as you've asked of us, and I don't like it. If what you are seeking to have is just another MySpace, then you'll probably get it. The people who want to be allowed to be adults and make use of the rational internet rule of "if it's offensive, relief is just a click away", will likely go elsewhere. It would be really unfortunate to see something that was such a good place for so long turn into just another corporate "safety forum".

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 6 replies

### Changes I would like to See.

shiyoushaNamae — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 04:44:01 GMT

1, #RECENT POSTS# in tribes, Topics Should be set as DEFAULT. Put the all posts on the far right side.

2. #ACTIVE MENBERS# The mouse over option for names does not work on EI6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2. The Names should show as DEFAULT.

3, In tribe topics, I have no “view all topics” bottom, It should be there at the top and bottom of page.

4. Please return the picture box. The pictures in that box are a nice decoration to the tribe, the first thing people see as the view a tribe. It’s a hook. It’s Functional and it’s esthetically pleasing.

5.What about adding Text formatting to Tribe description area or basic HTML code, <B>, </B>, <H1>, </H1> and so on. Color would be great. (RED,GRAY,BLACK, over White is hard on the eyes.

5a darker border around the sub-sections would be great.

6. #posts from my friends# should be in date order.

7. A lot of wasted space in topic post area.

8. My Icon in left hand side is too small and the “hi, ___” text is too small to read. It would be nice to have a “my tribe” link by this icon,

9. In My tribe area on the left hand side. #MY MESSAGES# and #MY STUFF# … could these be turned in to popup menus, fly-outs, or pull down menus to save space?

10. I want the old look and functionality back.

11. 40% approval is no reason to do it.

12. I was sure this was going to be delayed also.

13. All this an no new web page styles.

14. I get kick out of tribe just hitting other buttons. This time the #Tribes# button. This has happened dozens of times.

15. In the #MY TRIBE# area I would like to see all the tribes I am a moderator of.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

Breaking down the walls.

elliot — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 07:46:33 GMT

When we started Tribe, we were careful to define various items in the Tribe universe, and shape the experience with some rules about how and when users could create various kinds of content. For example, you can post listings and promote them to your friends, or to particular tribes, but you can't do the same things with photos. And, when you create a discussion topic, it's text-only -- no photos. Ditto with the promotions part.

What if we turned the posting feature inside out, and let you post anything to anywhere? This doesn't have to be as disorganized as it might initially seem; what I'm talking about is the ability to post anything:

- a discussion topic in a tribe
- a blog entry
- a photo
- a listing
- an event
- a request
- a recommendation or review
- a new tribe
- a new friend

to anywhere:

- for your friends to see
- for your friends and their friends to see
- for your friends and their friends and their friends to see
- for members of a particular tribe
- for members of all your tribes
- for people who live around you
- for members of everyone on Tribe
- for anyone on the Internet
- for just these particular people on Tribe
- for just yourself to see

What I have been imagining for a while now is a single workflow that lets you indicate what you're posting, and shows you additional fields as necessary. The second page would let you indicate the specific or general audience for your post.

If you've been following some of the more recent Web 2.0 discussions, you'll recognize some of the above as sounding a whole lot like structured blogging. And, because we have social networking and affinity groups (tribes) here as well, we can add some fancy things with privacy and targeting -- basically augmenting some of the powerful new features that you're just seeing in the photo albums with today's release.

Tribe would become a place where you can jot down whatever's on your mind, describe it a little bit (blog post, listing, recommendation, what have you), and shoot it out to whoever you think would be interested. People could visit your profile for a running total of everything you've posted (and only see the items that you want each of them to see). Perhaps they could even indicate the item types that they care to receive from you.

The flip side is that each member of your audience gets a continually changing, totally unique, and always updated list of stuff that's personally meaningful. Because Tribe contains things like events and restaurant recommendations as well as blog posts, photos and discussion topics, what I'm thinking of is something like a personalized version of your local alternative weekly paper.

System-level concepts aside, I think one major benefit of the structured style of posting is that is would simplify the entire process of creating content on Tribe. It will take some designing, but I'd like to work it out to where I can put this form at the bottom of a page (say, on a discussion topic) and let people post new content from just about anywhere.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 1 reply

> REBOOT

elliot — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 03:49:00 GMT

I'd like to formally reboot this tribe, and start posting here like I should have been all this time.

Stay tuned for some big ideas about this place.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 3 replies

Thanks for the photo.

elliot — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 03:51:22 GMT

I'd like to thank Strong for creating the equally literal and amusing main photo for this tribe.

(I just made up that nickname all by myself.)

I'll be using the rest of the photo album to post supporting visuals for my rumors and flights of fancy.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 1 reply

yo this tribe needs a photo!

am — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 19:16:14 GMT

>> make the scion tribe look better :-)

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

audio and cam soon?

ESTHER OF ARIZONA-SALOME SECRET DANCE PR — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 23:09:35 GMT

anybody can post any pics, but audio can identify the real triber, instant message, its better with cam. just a thought :(. IT might cost us :(. just an idea.
so what do you think?

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 1 reply

The Open Profile ...is now open.

elliot — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 22:09:50 GMT

We're live with the Open Profile. We're testing it with our top 1000 most active users (well, those that are opting in for our newsletter, anyway), and taking feedback in advance of our formal release.

In this preview release, the new, customizable Open Profile lets you personalize the identity you share on tribe.net. This includes:

- Choosing which friends are shown on your profile
- Choosing which tribes are shown on your profile
- Adding a blog to your profile
- Featuring a large-format photo on your profile
- Choosing the order of display for any content on your profile

As I've said in my previous backgrounder on the Open Profile, this is really just the first step. Right now we're focused on letting users have precise control over the content they put on their profiles, and in the near future we'll work on letting users fully personalize the presentation of that content. And, because we're also focused group interactions, I can't wait until we take a close look at making tribes flexible and customizable too.

Check it out. I think you'll like it.

Here are some links to get you started:

A customized profile by Gary, in our product group:
http://www.tribe.net/person/ad23e559-d5fa-47c3-9187-73c884e7c96a

More about the Profile Preview:
http://tribeprofile.tribe.net/

About this release:
http://releasenotes.tribe.net/

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 1 reply

The Open Profile: A Little Background.

elliot — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 22:08:51 GMT

We're about to debut some really exciting features here at Tribe, and I wanted to provide a little background on what we're doing. Our big release next week is just the first step in changing both the way people will be able to use the site, and in how we'll be able to add new features.

In terms of the user experience, the Open Profile is our way to tackle one of the original problems that we came together to solve: how do we accurately represent a person online? Our first cut involved taking some of the most popular features of the social networking websites: photos, personal and professional bios, testimonials, and friends. To this, we added groups, which we thought was a natural -- most people are defined to some degree by who they hang out with.

As we tracked other phenomenon on the web, and watched our own site grow, we noticed a few things. The first is that there are plenty of other ways to describe a person: photo albums, blogs, playlists, wishlists -- the list goes on. We knew that our first version of the profile was good enough to support other activities on tribe.net. However, we quickly realized that the simple modules we had built couldn't compete with deeper products that were getting better all the time.

Secondly, we saw no two people express themselves in the same way. And while a cookie-cutter solution would work in a product where an online identity was an afterthought (the "About Me" page on a blog, for example), you really can't apply the dreaded 80/20 rule when identity is the true focus. For identity, realism is in the nuances and the details.

The designer in me was frustrated in how the product wasn't accurately solving one of its key challenges. The (much younger and less experienced) developer in me recognized the long and torturous road ahead, if we chose to continually upgrade our own services to provide the unlimited personalization that I believed to be the answer.

After talks with Brian, Paul and other technical members of the team, and an off-site with those of us in the product group, a solution began to emerge -- one that would solve a lot of our problems:

1. We'd get out of the social network feature wars
2. We'd open the door to unlimited personalization
3. We'd get back on track to providing true value as an identity system
4. We'd devise technologies at an entirely different level than our competitors

What we've essentially done with the new Open Profile is completely reinvent it: rather than being a static collection of information, entered and maintained only on tribe.net, the Open Profile is a framework that points to any number of sources of information. This collection or aggregation of information is what we think will be really exciting: in one fell swoop, you'll be able to select any combination of your information to represent yourself, as well as use your favorite services to manage that information. If you like to use Ofoto to manage your photos, go ahead. Amazon for your wishlist? Blogger for your blog? Just do what you normally do to keep that information current, and then point your tribe.net profile to those sources to keep it automatically updated. And if you already have your content in tribe.net's photo albums or other modules, you can still show them on your profile like you always have.

[For us, this became literal thinking outside the box. We stepped out of the thin grey lines that enclosed our own tribe.net modules, so to speak, and figured out how to sidestep the whole game.]

There are other benefits to this open scheme as well. We've redesigned the presentation layer of our system, to present profiles in a truly modular fashion. This means that you'll be able to move content around, to put the most important items where your readers will be sure to see it. This modular approach allows us to enable you to have much more control over other aspects of presentation, including selecting exactly which items go into each module, how they're titled, and whether modules are expanded or collapsed when users view your profile. We've also designed everything with an eye for style customization, and you can look forward to selecting from a range of alternate styles to find the one that matches your own.

For those interested in the lower-level guts of the system, I'll let Brian pitch in with an explanation. I can tell you this: the Open Profile is not just about the user-facing, consumer experience. From the beginning, all of it is designed to work in the emerging world of content syndication and aggregation. Where we can, we'll support RSS and other standard methods of streaming data in, and when we can't, we'll write a custom plug-in to handle the task. And once we pull information in for our users, we'll make it available as standards-compliant feeds (at our user's option).

This is just the first step. The true power of the Open Profile will be revealed in successive releases, which will highlight some key infrastructure-level features. We have a long list of modules that will incorporate many of the popular and emerging services on the web, so that our users will be able to pick and choose whatever information that best reflects their personalities. We are also considering making the technology open in another sense: we'd like to make a toolkit available for our dedicated users who would like to write their own modules for interfacing to their own favorite web services.

Perhaps most exciting is what the Open Profile's core technologies mean for the rest of tribe.net. You can only imagine what a modular presenation layer and a standards-compliant, flexible data in/out layer will do for other parts of the site.

So there you have it. When you see the new profile in its preview release next week, for many of you it will look basically the same as it always has. This is so that users can preserve the tribe.net that they know and love, and then opt in to the new profile. I suggest you do opt in, and play around with the system -- it's the best way to get a sense for the new world that's coming.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

More on the personal web.

elliot — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 00:09:44 GMT

I'd like to see a lot more in the way of personalization on Tribe. It can start with allowing our profiles to go on forever: an order of magnitude more fields to fill out. And 5 or 10 "roll your own" fields, where people can specify the label as well as the content. "Favorite color:" "My dog's name:" "First crush:" Whatever. My casual research (surfing around) indicates that people will fill out whatever they like, whenever they feel like it. Let's give everyone more choices.

What goes along with this is control over that information: identifying who can see what in your profile. One way to do this is to have it determined by social distance: allow people to set a maximum degree of distance that a particular bit of information will be displayed to.

At a finer degree of granularity, 1st-degree friends could be grouped (a feature I think we should have in any case) and then various profile versions could be worked out for "professional friends" or "best friends" or "poker buddies" or something. Not sure how that one would pan out with respect to the rest of the experience.

There's a whole other thread here about customizing personal and tribe profile pages, but I'll save that for another day.

People like to:

a) Talk about themselves
b) Feel famous/attract the right kind of attention
c) Change their surroundings to suit their tastes
d) Show their friends what they've done

If we let people express themselves, they'll bring other people on to do the same thing.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

Shaking hands with the audience.

elliot — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 00:06:46 GMT

The beauty of Tribe is that we give everyone a built-in audience, and the means with which to recruit them.

We let you build a little kingdom here on Tribe, and you can see who's looking at what you create. We show you how many views there are on some things, and you can always click through on a discussion board post to see the person behind the words. But more than that, you can see who those people count as friends, and where they choose to hang out.

Lots of sites expose you to people that you wouldn't otherwise meet. Very few of them let you see who they actually are. And still fewer let you engage them directly. (Why? Well, few sites have a very developed concept of identity, for one thing. But we also happen to have attracted a very expressive group of initial users.)

I like to call this "the end of the lonely web." Since its inception, the internet has largely been a solitary place: even if you're active on it -- building your own homepage, or chatting in IRC, or posting to discussion boards -- it's neither common nor convenient to really connect with someone. Thousands of tiny flashlights, all pointed up into the sky, rather than 90 degrees left or right, so that we can all find each other in the dark.

Tribe would be much better if users could engage each other over specific needs and abilities: if people could advertise their skills/needs passively as well as actively, and promote themselves as resources for their friends and others.

One idea related to this is an alternative to the regular listing experience -- something like a more personal version of a listing, that gets sent out just to friends. Alerts or notices that appear in a special location, only for 1st-degree friends.

This could be as simple as having an "inside scoop" section when posting to Tribe: an additional field where people can enter information that only their friends can see. Something like, "Mention my name and get $10 off the cover!" or "Send me your resume and I'll put in a good word for you." This area should be clearly distinguished from the rest of the listing, and shouldn't be displayed when the listing is forwarded, for example.

That way, people will get the idea that Tribe is more than just listings. It's about opportunities that (usually) everyone can see, but in a system where your friends help you identify and act on them.

...

Hmm, the "friends only" comments feature is starting to make more sense now.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies

Back to basics.

elliot — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 23:17:45 GMT

I want to distill the Tribe experience down. Make it simpler, hide the complexity, make it more about one (or a few) easy-to-understand, instant-feedback, addictively productive behavior(s).

One of my earlier theses about this thing was that we were building a "lead economy." That was my clumsy way of saying that our system should be geared towards allowing people to create opportunities (leads) and promote/consume them (the economy).

To do this, I think you need a few ingredients:

- identifiable entities (people or groups of people)
- "consumable" items (content)
- communal places to for entities to view items

Those were the first things we built into Tribe. Personal profiles and social networks that let people identify themselves and bring others on. Listings, so people could express something they neede or had to offer. Tribes, profiles and member dashboards, so people could view listings from other people.

Along the way, we've built lots of features to make those three main concepts play nicely together: privacy controls, photo management, e-mail newsletters, and the like. All of these are pretty standard for any of the sites that play in this arena. But when you talk about figuring out the core experience, to get to the point of the matter, I think we have a ways to go.

Right now I'm fixated on narrowing behaviors down to 3 or 4 major classes. Something like:

- Browse/Search
- Save/Subscribe
- Publish/Promote

or:

- Find
- Save
- Tell

From a high level, that's what I think most users should be doing at Tribe. They should be finding or stumbling upon interesting content. They should be able to indicate that they'd like more of the same interesting content. They should be able to create interesting content of their own, for others to consume in the same way.

What I want to see happening is _collecting_ things that they like, so they can either see them again, or see more of the same. I can imagine people keeping a nice simple page with links to collected items ("bookmarks") and readouts of items from collected categories ("subscriptions" and "saved searches"). I imagine a page like that would be very useful, and something worth visiting over and over again -- especially if it self-tunes somehow. (Or maybe not -- maybe it's enough to allow users to tune it.) I imagine that this would work something like Amazon's "the page that you built" feature from days of yore. Except we have the power of social networking behind it, and (importantly) the "lifestyle" categories that we've got going on the site have a lower bar for tolerance than shopping categories. In other words, the stakes are higher in an Amazon experience than browsing for something to do this weekend.

This collecting/subscription idea meshes well with the concept of "selfish altruism." This was the idea that we could get people to benefit others when acting in their own interests. The feature I envision this becoming is so-called Collaborative Filtering, where people either actively or passively vote on content (this is lame/this is cool) and that determines what shows up for their friends. The assumption here is that the world is filled with lots of junk, and a group of friends can help each other sift through it all.

But the point is, I want the core experience to be very simple: you look around, click on things you like, and very quickly you'll be presented with more things you like. That's it.

posted in Elliot on Tribe - 0 replies