Triberr is a free Twitter tool that can significantly extend your Twitter reach. An invite-only service, Triberr users become members of “tribes” comprised of blog and Twitter friends.
What is a Triberr tribe?
Triberr uses the term “tribe” to describe groups of bloggers. After joining, you can become a member of 1 tribe and a Chief of 3. Tribes can include up to 7 members, including yourself.
Your tribes receive (clever and amusing) names by default, and you can change them as you see fit.
How does being part of a Triberr tribe extend your reach?
After joining Triberr, you add your RSS feed to your profile. Then each time you publish a new post, your tribe mates “automagically” tweet that new post, staggered approximately 40 to 120 minutes apart.
So, if your tribe’s Twitter followers total 8,744 people, then your new post is being automatically tweeted out with the exposure of 8,744 Twitter users.
How Do you Choose the “Right” Tribe?
There are several strategies one could take toward building a tribe. Triberr itself has a post on 10 tribe building strategies. The most conservative approach would be to select other bloggers who are very similar to you. Bloggers who you already read, so you have a good handle on what they write, how they write and the quality of posts they put out. Bloggers who you already tweet with.
In fact, it may very well be bloggers who you regularly retweet, which means that Triberr’s automated retweeting now does that task for you.
Can a Person Control What is Tweeted Out?
Yes! If you don’t like the idea that you don’t have 100% control over what is tweeted out, you can switch your profile settings from automated to manual. This means that new tweets will collect until you sign in and OK them.
And if you have a post that isn’t worthy of retweeting (say, a giveaway winner announcement), you can “pause” that specific post.
The Proof is in the Pudding
Triberr users can log in and see the number of clicks their posts received as a result of the retweeting.
Will Triberr Annoy my Twitter Followers?
Like with any automated tool, there is the potential that some will overuse it to the point that seems excessive. It is possible – through the use and purchase of “bones” –  for users to build power tribes that are much larger than the standard 7 people. But in the end, the choice to build a tribe that large and/or be a member of a tribe that large, comes down to individual responsibility. Each Triberr user needs to consider what effect their Triberr habits may have on their Twitter following as a whole. And each Triberr user needs to carefully consider tribe invitations that they send out – and those they accept – before doing so.
Do you use Triberr?ÂÂ
I used Triberr but I recently deleted my account.
I wasn’t seeing the value in it and I felt like there was little real interaction with people and a lot of links being tweeted out. For some that may be alright if they’re able to still have good conversations, but for me sometimes I can’t be online.
I also did not want to spend money to by “Bones” to grow my tribe or to be able to join other tribes.
I didn’t feel that it was worth the effort and I would rather tweet a post or something great I found on my own.
The tool really seems to generate love it or hate it feelings from the people who have used it.
Jackie touches on the issue I have with this service. A lot of people who use it seem to tweet nothing but links. They stop interacting with other people and forget the point of social media is to INTERACT. If all I see in someone’s stream is a bunch of Triberr links, I stop following them. There’s nothing wrong with trying to promote yourself and others you like. But there is a fine line, and I’m seeing it be crossed more and more.
I used to overuse Hootsuite and schedule posts, because it is hard for me to get online as often as I need to. But two things changed that. The first was the Bin Laden news. When that was blowing up, and people’s scheduled posts for giveaways were in the mix, it didn’t look good. Second, I found I was interacting less and less with others because I didn’t have to get online to be online. That’s not really the point.
Every tool has pros and cons, and every person who uses them needs to figure out what works best for her.
I think you bring up a great point; automation of any kind has a downside and needs to be used with great caution.
There needs to be a balance, for sure. If you are still actively engaging and the links/scheduled tweets/sponsored tweets/FourSquare checkins, etc you send out are only a fraction of your total stream, you won’t anger your followers.
Yeah so I am using it right now but I got in with a bad crowd. I realized that most of these bloggers were just giveaway bloggers and that is not exactly what I want tweeted out, plus there are a ridiculous number of them too, who I don’t really know. I have a couple of small tribes that are friends, but I would rather stick to them and get out of that big tribe. The only good thing about it is that it raised my twitter following from 950 to 1030 as of yesterday. But I just don’t feel like that huge group is doing me any favors.
It’s important to have a tribe you feel comfortable with. If you’re not feeling it, I’m sure there’s a polite way to back out. Or you can manually manage your stream.
Hi Jayme,
Thank you for understanding that Triberr can only do so much for you..at the end of the day, you have to pick people you’re tribed up with…
My suggestion is if the tribe doesnt fit, quit. (I swear, I dont normally rhyme my advice 🙂
Have you built out your own tribe yet?
Yes, I am trying to build my own tribe. We shall see how that goes. =)
I’m in the same boat. Was invited to a tribe that is full of giveaway bloggers. I find myself having to go in each day and delete the tweets I don’t want being sent out in my name because I don’t want to be annoying and, I guess, superficial.
I began and then suspended, because I didn’t really understand how it worked and then had a couple problems with the interface of it (not being able to accept a tribe request/view an invitation) from a new tribe.
I wasn’t aware of the ability to unautomate the tweeting. That changes my opinion of it a little. I feel like it’s SLIGHTLY redundant, because most people have made it so simple to retweet their posts that if I like it, I do it when I read it. So if I’m going to turn off the auto-tweet feature, it doesn’t seem to add much benefit.
It seems like the greatest benefit is for large tribes with the auto-tweet funtion on, and I think I would get a little sick of those in my twitter feed. Basically, I’m undecided!
There are pros and cons with the tool. If it doesn’t feel right for you, it doesn’t feel right for you.
I just joined Triberr and haven’t really figured out how it works, so this is a good post! I haven’t got many people in my tribes so the value of this isn’t really known to me. I’m willing to give it a go, but I doubt I’ll be spending money to buy bones.
Being able to see the stats on clicks is a nice feature and may help you decide if you see value in it or not.
Hi Alsion,
We’ve made it so that you can do A LOT with no need to buy Bones.
You get 100 Bones to start with, plus you can win Bones by voting up/down on posts in your stream and we’ll be building other ways of getting Bones for free.
Glad you’re enjoying the service and I’m always reachable on twitter if you need anything. @dino_dogan
As you know, I’m *very* against Triberr as an automated tool. In the morning (between 6-9am ET specifically) I am overwhelmed by the number of these tweets… especially when I follow all of the members of the same tribe in the same list (like in the example above) and see the same thing over and over during the course of a couple hours. Because of that, I can’t trust the recommendations of friends anymore… and do less clicking through.
The best thing I’ve done (on my home computer) is to utilize the filter in Tweetdeck to remove all of these tweets. I wish the same could be done in hootsuite (as well as mobile applications) but when using those applications I just have to be cognizant about whether someone is *REALLY* recommending it, or just having an automated tweet come through.
I wholeheartedly agree with Jackie’s comment above, if it’s truly an awesome post… I’ll take the time to tweet it out. I don’t need to spam my followers with things that are simply mediocre just to increase pageviews for myself and friends.
I did not know that you could filter those. Very interesting.
There seems to be a lot of functionality that many people aren’t using.
Because of strong feelings like this, it seems Triberr will need to evolve its functionality or eventually fizzle out. It will be interesting to see where they are in six months.
Hi Julie,
Your problem is a common one. I blame it on the lack of genetic diversity in the tribe. This is one of the drawbacks of choosing a niche strategy where a person like yourself follows all the bloggers already.
On the other hand, you follow these bloggers because you like them (I hope 🙂 and Triberr is giving them exposure they deserve that will enable them to continue to blog. Sometimes this happens at the small cost of annoyance to followers-in-common.
I’ve never heard of Triberr, so I’ll have to check it out. It looks like people either love it or hate it.
The feedback is really divided. People are very passionate about it.
Do you have to have a invite code to join?
Yeah, I’m with the “undecided” crowd myself. I do see the value in reaching a larger audience — however, as more and more and more people use and MISuse the system, its’ just going to become noise that is filtered out. I actually click on very FEW Tribrr links I see in my feed!
It will be interesting to see where Triberr is in 6 months as a result of sentiments like this.
So, we did make one change recently not reflected in the article.
The weird names are gone and new members get one tribe to build it themselves.
I really appreciate you sharing this info with your audience and if there is anything I can do to help, lemme know 🙂
Really interesting post. I didn’t join because I only retweet posts that I can completely relate to 100%. I wasn’t aware of the manual function. However, I still have limited time and I wouldn’t be able to dedicate the time to check out all of the proposed posts anyway. However, this does answer why I’ve seen so many “so-so” posts retweeted lately.
I’m trying to understand imbreeding. I watched the video on Triberr, but since they’ve changed up Triberr it doesnt appar to still be correct!
Help!
I’m still getting the message that if I invite one more person to my tribe, I can unlock inbreeding.
What part of it were you curious about?
Triberr is in beta and has been making tons of updates and changes. It might be easiest to “watch and wait” a bit. I know Dynamic Tribes are coming soon and that will change the landscape once again.
I guess I’ll just wait for them to make some finalization’s on their part 😉