Not *the* NSA (as in government agency), although I suppose they can fuck right off too. But NSA as in New Systems Associates, the group of Tribe members that invested in (and now indicates it has taken over) Tribe.net. Seriously, I swore it was an investment in or partnership with the existing team, but I guess even longtime Tribe members can do the whole Wall Street style takeover....

But yeah, FUCK RIGHT OFF. I had an opportunity to read a copy of an email that was sent to those who are still premium subscribers. On one hand, cheers for actually communicating with people. But on the other, jeers for charging people for what should be a core part of the free basic service on any website in 2008.

If you read the message below, you'll see that they now plan on making reasonable turnaround on support requests... a premium feature. In addition, while they claim to be making performance improvements to Tribe (a site that takes longer to load than any I've visited in months), they are now planning on touting a special low-load server so that premium members can enjoy a fast and responsive site.

Let me point out something. This is the 21st century. 2008, and very nearly 2009. With very few exceptions, when you click a button on a social networking site, something happens. Immediately. It's near-instantaneous, depending on your connection and the performance of your computer. That you would consider such a feature to be reserved for premium/paying subscribers... is preposterous.

A few short weeks ago, when the alleged partnership was announced, the plan was to throw the resources at it to fix the problems, and then start working to win back as many old members as possible and start building things anew. How the fuck do you really expect to do that with selling points like charging people a premium for basic levels of service?

So far, the new regime is sounding a lot worse than the old regime.

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Dear Premium Subscriber,

On Nov 10th Tribe operations was taken over by New Systems Associates, a new company formed by long time Tribe users who've been in the technology business for many years and who both saw the opportunity of Tribe and were frustrated enough with the problems to make a significant investment.

When we took over Tribe we found some good news and a lot of bad news; the bad mostly due to more than a year of under-staffing and the resultant patch-work maintenance that had to be done in a heroic effort just to keep the site up.

We've spent the last month fixing problems one by one, getting things working better and more efficiently. System-wide unplanned downtime has dropped to nearly zero and we have more improvements to go. Email is working for most people again and a fix for the balance should be in production next week. We have an upgrade path to significantly improve performance of the hardware which should make an obvious difference in the responsiveness of the site for everyone. We are implementing short and long term plans for feature enhancements. And we've mostly caught up with a massive backlog of support requests.

Previous management left us with two problems regarding subscriptions that we have to sort out on a case-by-case basis:

First, the nature of the subscriptions was unclear. Some people thought it was a donation, some thought it was a one-time contribution, some didn't understand at all. A Premium Subscription is an auto-renewing subscription service provided through PayPal on either annual, biannual, or monthly billing. The subscription is a "premium" service that gives access to additional features at a cost of $5 per month or $50 per year.

The "features" that came along with premium membership were not well defined under the previous management. We are in the process of implementing the following tangible benefits, some available immediately and all before the end of the year:

- Direct support. Help@tribe.net will always work and response has become prompt, but premium users can send email to premium@tribe.net from any registered email address for both for support and suggestions and will get direct and individual response.

- We will create personalized email addresses for premium users who would like them at your_handle@tribe.net forwarded to the address of your choice.

- We will create personalized "join me on Tribe" business cards for premium users who want them that provide a short, direct URL that will connect people you meet who are not Tribe members to your profile on Tribe.

- We are developing a mechanism to direct premium users to a low load server so premium users have the highest performance Tribe can provide and which will always be the first priority in server updates and maintenance.

- And additional features at no extra cost as we can make enhancements to the Tribe platform.

Second, the T-shirts. The mechanism for handling them was not well thought through. We're trying to sort out the backlog and the remaining inventory is being shipped over the next week.

Premium subscribers are instrumental to Tribe's survival and we take the relationship between Tribe and our premium subscribers very seriously. While we entirely agree that Tribe's history has given everyone ample reason to be concerned about Tribe and its direction, we've committed significant resources to fix Tribe and to live up to Tribe's potential and we hope you'll give us a chance.

We also understand that the economic situation has changed significantly in the last year and there are many reasons why you can't resubscribe. If that is the case, please cancel your subscription directly on PayPal. If you encounter any complications doing so, contact help@tribe.net.

Sincerely,
New Systems Associates