3 Reasons to Quit Triberr
This is a decision that I’ve honestly been thinking about for a while. Even when I first joined Triberr, I really did it as an experiment to see if it would pay off in the long run . . . it really hasn’t, not for me.
I’ve seen a small increase in my Twitter traffic to my blog, but not enough to make up for the amount of time I’ve spent fiddling with Triberr.
So, here are my three reasons for quitting Triberr – maybe you’ll even relate to some of them:
1. You’re not actually on Twitter very much.
This is my #1 challenge. I like Twitter occasionally, but I’m not on it for hours a day. Honestly, sometimes I go actual days without even looking at it. Since I tweet rarely, that means using Triberr, I now tweet mostly links. Yeah . . . no.
2. You don’t share links indiscriminately.
A little while back, I got asked to join a larger-than-normal-for-me tribe. Most of it is okay, but I don’t just randomly share links. I like to know the content of what I’m sharing, because when I attach my name to a link, it’s like an endorsement. And I’m not going to attach my name to just anything, which means I now have to take the time and go through and check links. I thought this whole social media thing was about gaining exposure as a writer . . . not losing time to write.
3. You realize that if you followed yourself on Twitter, you would unfollow yourself for the amount of links you share.
Yeah . . . had this realization not too long ago. No matter what your answers were to the first two criteria, if you realize the same thing about yourself with this third one, then it’s definitely time to say goodbye to Triberr.
So, as of Friday morning, I will be deleting my Triberr account. I’ve met a few great people through it, and have followed who I’m going to keep following outside of Triberr.
For everyone using Triberr (and loving it!) I wish you the best of luck.
For everyone else who’s wondering if it’s worth it, if you’re wondering in the first place, it probably isn’t.
I couldn’t agree more. I learned a long time ago that Triberr was nothing more than a spam generator! I hated how my stream kept getting bigger and bigger with everyone sharing everyone else’s blog posts. I was so annoying. I literally stopped reading a lot of what flew by and that meant missing what my friends actually had to say. I am sad….
We’re both cutting out extra frustrations in our life, and I’m just glad this is one that I don’t feel stressed about doing so. *hugs*
Hi Rebekah,
First and foremost, thank you for giving Triberr a serious shot and your consideration.
You make valid points of course. For some reason, and I totally blame myself for this, ppl feel they have to share stuff. This was not our intention.
In fact, I always tell people, choose your tribemates wisely, and only share what makes sense.
Having said that, Twitter is now only 1 small piece of Triberr. Same kind of sharing can happen across other social networks, but more importantly, our ReBlog feature and syndicated comment system is the truly useful stuff, and frankly, revolutionary, if I may say so myself 🙂
However, we’ve done a piss poor job of surfacing these features, which is something we’re addressing with the new re-design.
Anyways…I could go on. 🙂
Give us time to get things better. Triberr is just 2 dudes and a van. It’s our part-time gig, and we’re doing our best to service bloggers and solve their biggest pain points, because we are bloggers ourselves.
I invite you to give us another try in 3 months, you might find lots of things have changed 🙂
Cheers,
Dino
Founder of Triberr
I am very happy to read this, Dino! I may have to check you out again in 3 months, like yous said. I wrote something about Triberr a long time ago on my blog (http://writebackwards.we3dements.com/wordpress/2012/05/04/twitter-triberr-and-timelines/) and that’s what I based my comment to Rebekah on. I gave up Triberr a while ago because I wasn’t getting ANY traffic and therefore it wasn’t beneficial. Thanks for your reply!
Jamie
Dino, first off, thanks for stopping by and commenting! A friend of mine literally texted me that you had commented.
Rest assured, I do not feel in anyway that I have to share links. My main problem is that I have to sort through too much to find the links I do want to share. At that point, I might as well just limit myself to sharing blog posts as I read them.
Also, as I said, I didn’t see that much of a traffic increase to my blog. Between my three tribes, there was a combined reach of almost 90,000. And yet I’m still only seeing my “average” visits to my blog per day of 20-50 (and rarely, 100 in a day, but those are not from Twitter, because wordpress.com tracks my stats for me). So, traffic-wise, it’s just not worth it for me.
Most of my traffic comes from search engines and facebook, or other blogs directly. Even if we can share to other platforms, I’m on Google+ even less than I’m on Twitter, and I don’t have any other social media accounts at the current time.
If I’m bored in a few months, I’ll definitely come and see what upgrades are happening, but at this point, I think it’s a matter of Triberr isn’t right for me and my blogging needs. That doesn’t mean it’s not right for anyone else, though. You’re obviously meeting a need in the community, it’s just that not everyone has the same needs because we don’t all have the same goals.
Once again, thanks for stopping by!
Dino,
I don’t think the icky part of Triberr is because of you (or the other dude and the van), in fact, I would argue that you two dudes are amazing and revolutionary in your vision.
Unfortunately, your vision isn’t what some tribe leaders have in mind. It’s their bottom line and rankings that they see, which means they will start a tribe and demand the tribemates share EVERYTHING. I’ve been invited to a few of these tribes with this stipulation and I had to say, no thanks.
Also, I know we don’t HAVE to share everything, but there is a huge amount of guilt if you don’t. They’re pimping me, I need to reciprocate, right? It’s not fair to have everyone linking to my site and I don’t link to theirs.
As for the other coolness you spoke of, what??? ReBlog feature? Syndicated comments? I don’t even know what that means. I’m sure my pal Jenny Hansen would know, but she’s a techie goddess and I’m a writer trying to write excellent books. I don’t have time to learn new tools, or revamp my knowledge of old tools.
I know you and your partner (and possibly the van) are working your butt’s off to help us bloggers and I thank you for that. I just wish there was a way to support my writer friends without the guilt or spamminess I feel from Triberr.
I’ve been trying to understand this for the longest time…maybe you can help.
Why would anyone join a tribe that is too big, too spammy, too demanding, too “not what I want”?
Also, I’ve noticed some folks shy away from starting their own tribe and running it the “right way”. I dont get it at all….what gives?
🙂
Part of it is that it’s hard to tell the actual quality of a tribe until you’ve been a part of it for at least a week.
Also, the starting of your own tribe can be a bit confusing (also, the bones? Bones confuse me so much and I could never figure what the heck they were for, or why I had to have them).
It also depends on how often the members of the tribe post. The largest tribe I was in had almost 30 members, but almost all of them post at least once a day, so even if I spaced my shares out to an hour apart, it still took more than 24 hours to get through the entire list.
And if someone (or multiple people) happened to post more than once in a day? Oh dear . . .
If I do ever go back to Triberr, I’ll never be in a tribe of more than 4-5 people, max. Anything over that seems to go spammy.
Hey Dino,
Okay, so I read this yesterday and wanted to percolate on my answer before coming back to reply. In the meantime, I went to see the changes you made to Triberr since I was there last week. I have to say, the new look is kind of cool. The approve button? A little weird. If I hover over it too long, it changes back to unapprove. Why?
Anyway, to answer your question, I think we feel we ‘should’ be in a larger tribe for more exposure. It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that we have to promote others in order to promote ourselves. Sometimes, we don’t know what we want until we get to a point where we know what we don’t want.
What do you mean by ‘running it the “right way”‘? What is the proper way to run a tribe? I don’t think many people know.
I like the idea of promoting my writer friends, but not at the expense of losing credibility of my name.
So this is what I think I’m comfortable with: I quit out of two tribes where there were either too many people that I didn’t know (hence, their blog content was questionable to me since I don’t read their blogs), or I wasn’t comfortable with the ‘rules’ of the tribe.
Of the tribes I remained a member, I know all of the others well enough that I trust their blog content and have no issues with my name being associated with them. I also decided that I won’t send out more than 5 links a day. That will give me plenty of time to hop on Twitter and strike up conversations without looking like a spam bot.
One question: We used to be able to edit the title, to put in something personal so our readers knew we read the blog. I don’t see where to do this. Is that feature still available and I’m just a goofball? Or is it gone? That was on feature I really liked about Triberr.
I’ve got to say, Dino, I truly appreciate the fact that you’re open to criticism and I get the feeling you really do want to make Triberr a fabulous place to share content. I get it, I really do, and I wish I had a better way of helping, but if I did, then I’d be one of the two guys in the van and not a writer. My brain doesn’t think that way. So, all I can offer you is my honest opinion and a second shot at making Triberr work for me.
Since I’ve totally blogjacked Rebekah’s blog, if you want to chat more, shoot me an email at: ttetherton at gmail dot com 🙂
Oh, don’t worry about blogjacking. It’s been a while since a conversation this invigorating took over the comments :D.
I loved you before, but now I’m positively smitten with you! These are the exact arguments/dilemmas I was having with Triberr. So one day I took a long look at my Twitter feed and decided I was nothing more than an infomercial for other people’s blogs. The few tweets I made to, you know, actually connect to people, were lost in the myriad of links.
So, I did the same as you and decided to stop using Triberr. I haven’t quite taken the next step to deleting my account, but you’ve inspired me. So, tomorrow morning, I will delete my account with you. We can hold virtual pinkies and make the leap together.
I feel lighter already.
Awww, do you want to know something? I’ve been smitten with you since I first read your tagline on your blog (A Cup of Tea and Sorcery) and went “THIS IS A WOMAN AFTER MY OWN HEART! I WILL FOLLOW HER FOREVER!”
*ahem* *sips tea*
Which also makes me sad at how little I’ve been able to read/comment on your blog lately. But, as I’m slowly but surely revising my social media and blogging habits, hopefully this will change soon!
Yes, virtual pinkie holding to the rescue! I feel lighter already, too! 😀
It’s a smittenfest!
Do not even worry about being busy and not commenting. I’ve been there. And I’m sure I’ll be there again. Your writing should always come first! Besides, I know you’re out there and that you care. ❤
I considered Triberr once when it first made waves but now it appears congested and a little spammy so I’m glad I waited. I’m not on Twitter much either and I’m rather particular about what links I share.
*nod* I was beginning to feel like a spammer. So oh well, I’d rather be known for the quality of links I share rather than the quantity :).
You make some good points, but I’ll have to agree with Dino as well. I try to be fairly selective on what I send out from Triberr for the reasons you make. I’ve found some truly interesting posts from the Triberr listings and I’m happy to tweet these out. I’ve also seen a number blog visits as a direct result of Triberr tweets. All social media takes up some time, but we just have to be selective about what we do with that time.
ON the pro side of Triberr, the efforts of the other members does much of my own promo work for me and I appreciate what they have done to let others know about my blog posts.
Lee
See, if you’re getting something in return for your effort, then it’s worth it ;).
I’ve been debating quiting Triberr, or at least one of the tribes I’m in (it’s huge, and it all romance. I neither write nor read romance). Now that I think about it, I really haven’t been getting much traffic from it (since all those romance-minded people aren’t finding anything romantic on my blog). I think I’ll just quit that tribe, and keep the others.
I say quitting the tribe will probably be an excellent move for you ;).
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