Tribe.net Toast?
It was just reported that Tribe.net laid off half its staff on Thursday [via FC]. No official announcement yet, so perhaps there is still hope for an upturn. Despite the recent disasterous UI redesign, the site was definitely my favorite among such social networking sites.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:51 pm
I think I still have an invitation to join from a certain someone in my inbox. ; )
I had a quick look at the site design. I don’t recall its former design but even its current (re)design is much easier on the senses than myspace. Why I ever decided to put up a profile at that junk heap is beyond me.
May 4th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
MySpace is a lovely bit of anarchy where interactive chaos reigns. Interesting place in some ways, but not as functional social software.
Tribe had more of a countercultural feel–I liked the freak-to-square ratio. Alts and fakesters abounded — and that was ok. Sort of like an online Marti Gras. Reminded me a bit of the old skool Nerve.com.
With the redesign they started making all the more edgy tribes “invisible” to new users. They tried localizing everything a la Craig’s List, which made no sense, since no one I knew on Tribe actually lived in my area. It was basically a great idea that was warped by marketing/business requirements.
Just wait, given another 12 months we’ll be talking this way about YouTube.