I've seen this in a few places... don't know how close to the truth it is, but...
This is copied from a blog by fellow Triber, Pi. Please respond on his blog, if you're so inclined.
people.tribe.net/pi/blog/7...7#comments
people.tribe.net/pi/blog/7...d97c94b047
Thanks!

"I've been poking around on some of the admin tribes and it is looking pretty grim for Tribe.net. Please read below and respond

The word in some of the admin tribes is that Tribe.net is in serious financial peril. Peril that may make this site go away. Most of us belong to MySpace and/or Bebo and/or Facebook, yet we return to Tribe because it is what serves us best. There are even rumors that Tribe is down to less than five employees.

Given the above, would you be willing to pay a $5/mo subscription fee to tribe as a Premium Member? Premium Members might receive benefits such as ad-free usage, more customizable skins, or other such bells and whistles. Please, if you support tribe and are willing to pay HALF THE COST OF A MOVIE TICKET for one month of Premium Usage, respond to this blog post. Repost this in YOUR BLOG. Collect the yays and nays and forward them to Pi. After ten days I will summarize the results and forward them to the Admins.

Please Support Tribe"

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I love Tribe and would hate to lose it!
So we have these ads on every page... would it help keep advertisers interested in staying on if they got more traffic from here? I'm sure they track where the hits come from... so click on an ad every time you log in. At least the advertisers would see more traffic as more potential sales, more reason to keep paying for ad space and supporting Tribe.
Yes, I would be willing to pay a small fee, but in the long run how does that compete with free sites like MySpace and Facebook, etc?