Somebody sent me an invitation to Triberr.
“Really? You want ME to join YOUR tribe?”
I was of one of those uncool kids who never got invited to anything, so when I see the word invitation the nerdy adolescent girl inside me perks up.
“Hmmm…let’s see…friends automatically re-tweet your blog posts…you automatically re-tweet your friends’ blog posts…amplify your message…increase your traffic…blah, blah, blah… It sounds interesting. I’ll try anything once.” If only they’d known that about me back in high school. I might have been more popular.
So I signed up. At first Triberr was OK. There were only five or six people in the tribe, and my account was automatically tweeting three or four links a day. Then the tribe grew, and it exploded.
Suddenly my account was tweeting 25, 45, 60 plus links from other people everyday. Some of them were people who’d joined the tribe after me that I didn’t know, who’s sites I’d never visited. Then I noticed tweets about stuff that had nothing to do with the audience I was trying to reach. Thanks to a friend I noticed tweets about subjects I’d never tweet about.
“Whoa! Let’s re-think this Triberr thing.”
My own posts were being tweeted by other members as much as 34 times a day. A quick check of my blog stats and referrers quickly reveled that virtually no one was clicking through though.
The truth is that many links automatically tweeted everyday from any account, whether via Triberr or a bot, are basically spam. People know the links come from Triberr. They know you have no idea what you’re tweeting. They’re not going to click, and they will get annoyed. It will make you more unpopular than I was back when I was a drama geek.
I deleted my account when I realized how out-of-control Triberr was, and honestly I felt guilty for subjecting my followers to that.
Social media is supposed to be, well, social. Tweeting stuff you know nothing about isn’t social.
Reading a great article, and sharing the link with your followers because you think it will benefit them too — well — I don’t know if it will make you popular, but it will at least make you likeable.
And social.
Hi Colleen,
Thank you for giving Triberr a shot. I love hearing reviews from people who have actually tried it, no matter the outcome.
For the sake of not throwing baby out with the water, allow me to pontificate on what may have gone wrong from a slightly different angle 🙂
The default tribe size is 7. We figure most people know and trust that many bloggers, which seams to have worked for you, until the tribe expanded to many more.
Triberr is a platform, and when I bring people into my tribe, I gather the tribe in the Tribe Counsel area and ask if a person would be a good fit. A king of consensus building before I admit a new member.
I’ve grown my tribes slowly as well as fast, and when I did it too fast, I’ve had people leave the tribe. And so I’ve learned 🙂
Also, keep in mind that you dont have to leave Triberr to leave a tribe. And all members get a tribe of their own which they can build as they see fit.
We try to make a platform that solves a few technical problems but our platform will never attempt to solve human problems. We let each Chief run their tribes as they see fit. Mistakes and all.
Hope that makes sense and thnx again for this post. We get so many glowing write-ups; it not only goes to our head, but they are also not as useful to us. A write up like yours gives us an issue that may need to be addressed by better communicating features and options to tribe members.
This is great to know!! I just got an invite for Triberr yesterday and I had no idea what it is. I hadn’t looked into it, and now you’ve saved me from doing so!
This sounds like spam hidden with a social networking pretense. Not cool. Not cool at all! Thanks for posting this…I’m going to retweet it with my own hands! LOL
I also have joined Triberr – cause at the time it was the “thing to do”.
And people do tweet my posts – a lot of them are people I’ve never interacted with – but it hasn’t been inconvenient to me because my tribe is not absolutely huge. I’ve never checked to see how many people click from it – I haven’t noticed anything saying “Triberr” though, I notice a lot of “Twitter” – so I assume it works that way for me.
Also, I never see my account tweeting others’ posts – it may be a mistake in Triberr but I assume they fix their mistakes.
WRT whether you should join it or not, Eve, really up to you – the only reason I keep it is because I reach twitter followers beyond my follower scope – and hopefully gain a few more views and a few more followers. At the same time – I never thought of it as spam – maybe because the tribe I’m in is quite small.
If it grows and goes out of hand, maybe I will stop using it – but for the time being it works for me.
@Bewildered Bug, You can set your Triberr account so that it doesn’t tweet the links from others in your tribe unless you choose to do so manually. Then they’re tweeting your links, and you’re not reciprocating, which to me doesn’t seem right either.
I joined Triberr and I left for the exact same reasons you did. And as matter of fact this morning Triberr was being as annoying as ever because I kept seeing the same posts being tweeted over and over again. I hope that Triberr figures something out soon and fixes it.
@Jackie, I think it’s good concept, but you’re right. It needs some work.
I started a tribe last week for local bloggers…and after a week with it, I am wondering about the spammy-ness about it also. If I delete my tribe, and my account now Im afraid people will be mad at me…but I don’t want my stream taken up with spam if the tribe gets too big too!!
Oh boy.
@Megan, I do think Triberr can work if the tribe stays small, and everyone writes on closely related topics.