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Monday, April 30, 2012

Why I'm Not In Love With Triberr

For those who aren't already familiar with Triberr (and you probably are if you use Twitter) it's a a way to broadcast your blog tweets to a wider audience. When you join Triberr you join a Tribe. When someone from your Tribe puts up a new blog post you have the option to send a tweet about that blog, or not, it's up to you.

Unlike retweeting, Triberr lets you set up how often you want a Triberr tweet to go out. You could have new tweets go out every twenty minutes, or every three hours, or a whole slew every twelve hours if you really wanted to (please don't). Triberr has just opened a feature that allows you to ReBlog a Tribe blog post.


Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. If you belong to a Tribe you are allowing everyone to use your content. In other areas of the internet we call that Content Plagiarism. But, hey, you signed up for it!

In the future Triberr is expanding to allow bloggers to turn their blog content into a book with just a few button pushes, some money, and boom! E-book!

There other services that turn blogs into books, but it's nice to know the market is expanding.

And, for good reason, there are tech people that love Triberr. Geekless Tech wrote Attention All BloggersL Why aren't you on Triberr? detailing all the wonderful things a Tribe can do for a blogger. And I agree with most of it.

Triberr is great for a certain type of blogger.

For craft, food, and tech bloggers who all generate different content and who all have followers in Twitter who are looking for new recipes, craft ideas, and tech updates Triberr is great. It saves the twitter followers from .... following everyone I guess? o.O

Okay, I have no idea what the benefit is. Never mind.

If you're a professional blogger who uses your twitter feed strictly to announce new blog stuff, and you don't mind sharing all your content, Triberr might be the right thing for you.

Please forgive me for unfollowing.

You see, what happens when you join a Tribe is that your tweet stream becomes a spam of Via. Dee Carney posted about the problem last week under the title "Via Triberr? No thanks." and I'm quoting with permission:

What have I seen as a result of this Twitter app? On any given day, I’m subjected to literally hundreds of tweets via Triberr linking to blogs. The thing about Twitter though is that authors seem to come in groups. So if ten authors are making up a Triberr tribe, and all ten authors tweet about the same post, my tweet stream is filled with the same message. What happens when people forget that Twitter is all about social networking i.e., interaction, and do nothing but post Triberr tweets?… It’s pretty frustrating.

Fortunately, Tweetdeck allows you the ability to block apps like Triberr. Thank God. (To do it, go to Settings, Global Filter, From Sources, and type in “Triberr”)


Even if you keep your Tribe under control and send out only one Triberr tweet every two hours, authors make horrible Tribes.

Every author thinks, "Two hundred thousand people reading about me? That's great! I'll blog about my book and I'll be a sensation overnight!" Here's the reality: most of those two hundred thousand are other authors. And while authors make great tweeps, they don't make a fan base for a book. Most of them are like me, they have a limited budget and a To Be Read list a mile long.

Worse, those two hundred thousand followers in a Tribe of authors probably has better than fifty percent overlap. The publishing community is small. If I didn't already follow an author who joined your Tribe, I probably started following them after a RT or two. Now I get whole Tribes of authors beating me with the same blog post. None of that is going to sell your book any more than spamming Twitter with sale links to your book is going to sell your book.

Interacting? Making friends? Being social? That will sell your book on Twitter.

So, thank you to everyone who has invited me to join a Tribe. I know you have the best of intentions and I hope your book sky rockets to the top of the charts and you make a million dollars. Please don't take it personally when I unfollow you. It's not you, it's me. I'm tired of the Triberr spam.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Liana, Have a couple of questions. This triberr thing is not the one that is at the bottom of your blog page to share is it? I do that occasionally. However if it is something you have to sign up for I am sure I am not in it. I don't wander around the internet doing things cause I do not want to get a virus or some stupid thing that messes up my computer..I do not open E-mails unless I am pretty sure it is in reply to something I asked or someone I know. Anyhow thanks for the warning.

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    1. No, the buttons at the bottom blogs let you tweet, FB, or otherwise share the blog link. Triberr is something you need to sign up for.

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  2. This is useful. I've heard some buzz about this Triberr thing but hadn't gotten around to doing much research. That does not at all sound like fun. My twitter feed is filled enough all ready. I wouldn't want to precipitate spamming others.

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    1. I think there are some bloggers who will find Triberr useful, but I don't think authors are those people. We don't make a living off our blogs. Authors have blogs to connect with readers, it's our base of operations so someone can easily find our books and contact information. For an author, I think Triberr is a waste of time and goodwill.

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  3. I've considered Triberr a few times, but shied away because I have enough social media stuff that I keep up with as it is. From what you've said, I do have people who use it on my twitter stream (thankfully I don't get too many duplicate tweets because of it) and honestly, I don't really pay that much attention to them. Only if it's from close twitter friends might I look.

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  4. Thank you, thank you for this post. I find interesting and useful info in blogs, forums, and other internet content, but not in tweets or most other things pushed at me.

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  5. You could have new tweets go out every twenty minutes, or every three hours, or a whole slew every twelve hours

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