Exodus of the Tribes?

Hey all,

This is my post on the recent goings on at tribe. I am a tribe member and have been for a long time. In fact, tribe was one of my main inspirations in designing the community we're bulding at zaadz.

The thing I love most about tribe is the people. It seems/seemed to attract the edgy, alternative Burning Man type crowd. These are the people that I owe my own personal evolution to as I spent much of the past 5 years 'finding myself' while dancing to techno music under the full moon in the middle of some desert in southern california.

When Brian and I came together to create zaadz, we had the intention of creating a community for people who were seeking... spirituality, self-expression, fulfillment, success in life... or whatever you want to call it. I came at it from the alternative, fluffy, spiritual side; Brian came at it from the more grounded, practical, business side.

Turns out, that makes a pretty powerful combination.

You might notice some references to capitalism or, in particular, the merging of spirituality and capitalism on the site. Some people are put off by that, but guess what? it's very intentional.

If there's anything we should know about living in this world in the 21st century, it's that if something is going to be successful in the long term, it must be sustainable. Tribe is an example of a great idea that just wasn't sustainable. I'm not saying that it couldn't have been or that it won't be in the future, but the vision with which it was created has fundamentally changed because making the money the site needed to stay in business was a hindsight.

I won't get into the details. You can read a little about my thoughts in my last blog post.

I just want to say that the recent changes over at tribe are a dissapointment to me as well. Fortunately, I'm not as impacted by them as some because I'm building my own social networking site ;)

While I mourn the loss of the alternative 'edge' at tribe in their decision to go mainstream, I'm elated to be the foster parent of thousands of tribe users who 'get it'. This site is built for you and we're here to honor your feedback and comments... not ignore them.

Just so you know, we're doing everything we can to serve the users who are coming over from tribe. We have a limited set of tools right now, but  we're pushing to get certain pieces of functionality launched that will pave the way for more interactivity on the site. In fact, this morning we decided to alter our current development plan so we can launch our tribe/group functionality by Mid-February, much sooner than we originally anticipated.

I'd love to tell you more about our plans and what's coming but I don't think I can cover it all here. Please leave your comments or message me persoanlly and I'll get back to you with any details you'd like to know.

We'll be in touch.

Peace,

-A