03 Dec
Tribe Goes Downhill
Tribe officially launched a paid premium subscription. At launch time, no existing features will be deleted from the free accounts. Of course, over time, new features will be added only for paid subscribers. I think it’s about time to close my Tribe account. Ever since Cisco bought them, it’s all just gone downhill.
logan, i don’t understand your rationale for closing your tribe account. although i think they picked a weird way to do it, i’m pleased that tribe has instituted a way for members to easily donate money to improve service. i’ve had several conversations in the last month about how great it would be if they had a ‘pledge drive’ or some sort of voluntary paid subscription plan. and here it is!
i realize that not everyone has had the same experience with tribe as i have, but for me and a large number of others, tribe has gone so far as to be legitimately life-changing. it’s the only SNS that i love. it caters to my extended community, and i like its format far more than the formats of any other service.
granted, there are some *extremely* frustrating problems with service, but i’m hoping that the new subscription sign-ups will help with that.
if you looked over the perks for ‘premium’ membership, they’re pretty nominal. i doubt that there will end up being much of a difference in the two types of membership; the premium thing just seems to me to be the voluntary subscription that i wanted to see happen.
what are your concerns? why do you think this is a problem?
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:00 pmi feel the tribe experience has been pretty awful for the last long while. features don’t work the way they should and it’s slow as hell. now that cisco owns them, there’s little chance the site will amount to much, ever. and i’m fine with that. tribe’s sloth-like slowness made me stop using it as a daily source of social connecting a long time ago. this move toward monetizing it directly off the itty-bitty-tiny user base just makes me see the writing on the wall: it’s gonna be gone soon because the social network doesn’t make money. cisco cares about money as all big corporations do. will it be sad if tribe goes away? yes, approximately 600,000 users will mourn its passing. i probably won’t be one of them.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:41 pmit’s slow, and there are other problems, but it’s still the only SNS that focuses on the people i want to be connected to in my daily life and creates a great forum for management of local community/ies.
i don’t mean to suggest that you should lurrrrve tribe like i do; i am, however, curious as to why you’d actively remove your profile. is there a reason to remove yourself from the network? just to protest how slow it is?
it seems to me that tribe would be back on track if it got some funding. the model’s great, and i don’t hear members complaining about that aspect of the network. they just complain about the speed and the downtime.
anywho–just some thoughts
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:18 pm