Triberr

Triberr: Waste of time or worth a try?

How many times do you see a new social media tool released and wonder how it's going to bring value to you? Monthly? Weekly? Daily?

Yeah, me too. I'm occasionally quick to dismiss tools but other times I'm eager to give them a try as soon as I hear about them. With Triberr, the latter is definitely the case.

If you haven't heard of Triberr, here's a quick explanation:

Triberr allows you to connect with other people in "tribes". Once in a tribe(s):
Every time you publish a new post, Triberr sends it to everyone in your tribe and they tweet it to their followers. You do the same for everyone in your tribe. All this is automagicated, of course. (Triberr FAQ page)

Obviously, "automagicated" isn't for everyone, but careful thought to a usage strategy can really benefit Triberr users. I happen to be a fan of automation - when it's used cautiously.

What makes Triberr worth a try?

I have about 200 blogs in my RSS reader. While I don't have the desire to share every one of those posts with the world, I do have a number of friends whose content I enjoy, trust and want to share. The problem is that I'm nearly always behind on reading their blogs. Triberr allows me to share their posts in a timely manner without needing to catch them tweeting it in order to retweet it.

The idea of creating a tribe of like-minded people who will share my content - and vice versa - is very appealing to me, but Triberr is not a perfect tool - not even close.

What makes Triberr a waste of time?

With any tool it's important to take the strengths and the weaknesses into consideration. The strengths are why we want to use the tool in the first place. The weaknesses are a huge influence in the way we use the tools. Every tool has room for improvement. Here are some lessons I've learned in my short time using Triberr:

  1. Check out the tribes you're joining before you jump in. I received an invitation to a tribe that was full of 43 review bloggers. It wasn't until the "automagicated" tweets began spamming my followers that I realized the content wasn't in line with what I'd normally tweet and promptly left the tribe. Being in the wrong tribe is a waste of time.

  2. Inbreeding is a good thing. As an existing Triberr member, I can't join other members' tribes and they can't invite me until they (or I) have unlocked "inbreeding". To unlock it, you must invite and have 6 other people successfully join Triberr. Of all the things I could talk about, this one annoys me the most. I realize they want to grow the tool, but they're forcing members to harass friends and colleagues rather than relying on the tool itself to be attractive to newcomers. It's still in the invitation-only stage, which is also a challenge. Having to be invited/invite people to use all functions is a waste of time.

  3. Before using any tool for automation, check your settings - all of them. There is a way to turn off automatic tweets for individuals or an entire tribe. I wish I had looked for that when I was in the review blogger tribe. There's also a way to space out tweets so you don't tweet 20 posts at once. I see Triberr users all the time who don't use this option. Spamming your followers is a waste of time.


My personal experience with Triberr hasn't been impressive so far, but I'm sticking with it because I think it has great potential and I know that changes are coming.