Inappropriate ads

Ok so we've gotten a lot of flack about how our ads are annoying, irritating and generally not appropriate for the folks on Tribe.

So yes - we do want to make those ads better and more appropriate. It'll take a little time to get that right. Please be patient as that gets moving.

I have to say that it's a problem that affects everyone. Here's a great example I just found today... the web is screaming for a better solution.

Feedback

I had a message go out to all the Tribe members on the system last Wednesday and since then I've been getting a ton of mail.

It's been really fun to be able to hear from people that I've never seen on the site before. Sometimes you get caught in a little bit of an echo chamber on some of the "official" forums like Tribe Ideas or the Tribe User Profile tribe. It's been great to hear from some of the other folks on the site too!

And ofcourse it's gratifying to hear from people that have had positive experiences on the site and who have shared their excitement at being able to try the new features we have rolled out on the site.

I was struck by the fact that even when people didn't like some of the changes that there were some good constructive suggestions that people had.

I hope that we can keep up the level of conversation and that people continue to mail me. I can't promise that I'll keep up with it but I'll try!

New Stuff is Almost Up!!!

We're in the final stretch to get the site up and there's a little buzz in the air as everyone is cranking to find and fix the last minute bugs that have creeped in.

Listening to other people's conversations

I was reading Eric's latest blog post:
sanfrancisco.tribe.net/templa...tail.vm

It made me think of the times that I've eavesdropped on other people's conversations.

It's always an interesting moment when both you and the person you're with are eavesdropping on someone else's conversation at the same time instead of having your own.

Then you notice that you haven't been talking for ten minutes. Look at each other in that vaguely guilty way and start talking just so it's not as obvious that you've been listening to the otehr people...

If you thought Baby Name visualization was cool...

This is much cooler!

Being able to dive into data like this is so awesome!

www.socialexplorer.com/maps/C...aps.asp

Almost up!

We're in the final testing stages of getting the new profile system up. I hope that people like it...

I want one!!!

Ok this has got to be one of the neatest things I've seen in a while.

www.gnr8.biz/glowbrick.html

It's a glowing lightbulb encased in lucite or plastic or something that is totally solar powered.

Ok ok so it's probably just a phosphoresent material stuck inside something that's transparent but the lightbulb is just so cool.

Have to restrain myself from running out and buying it.

Must

Not

Click

Destroying the Earth

This has got to be one of the most hysterical websites that I've seen in a while.

ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc...html#current

Too funny!

Toolsets

Ron just posted a comment on my last post about how Tribe really needs to focus on creating toolsets for users.

I think that is a really interesting position to take and one that many of the folks that I talk to think about. For example Marc Canter is a huge advocate of toolsets. Of empowering users by giving them the tools to create and express and then getting out of the way.

One question that comes up is what are the toolsets that our users would want? Another that immediately springs to mind is how does that benefit the company? Can Tribe survive as being an open tools company? What are the other companies out there that do this?

Hard choices

Part of me thinks that I should probably just post this over to the Tribe User Profile Preview Tribe (say that 5 times fast) but I figure that this might be a good spot to get my thoughts out without creating huge waves.

One of the toughest problems we face is knowing that we have lots of cool things that we COULD do but choosing which ones are really the ones that will be most valuable for people.

Do we let users have more customizability around their photos and photo modules? I know that many of users have asked for this (from the very beginning in fac) and yet we hesitate to prioritize this at a super high level compared to say letting users have more customization capability over their new profiles.

Let me explain - ultimately the question comes down to: which one will get people more excited to join tribe? The problem with the photo module is that even if we got it up to snuff and gave people the ability to have multiple albums, order the photos however they wanted and have permanent URLs for them... we'd still never be as good as a dedicated photo site at handling photos. If you cared about photos - you'd still go elsewhere and not to tribe.

Our hope is that the idea of an Open Profile will break us out of the logjam. That we will be able to integrate other people's functionality into our site so that our users get the best of all worlds. I'll talk more about that later.