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Seth Godin's Triiibes Experiment Has Peaked?

Posted by Mike Volpe on Sun, Feb 08, 2009
 

I have a ton of respect for Seth Godin and I am a huge fan of his.  That's why when he launched the www.triiibes.com community as part of his latest book launch, I joined the community immediately.

But I realized today that I had not logged into the community for a long time.  I guess I just didn't get any value out of it - I am a lot more active in Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.  So I checked the stats for the Triibes website on Compete, and sure enough, it looks like after a peak around the launch, traffic has been declining.  As of writing this, traffic peaked in August 2008 at about 35,000 monthly visitors and has dropped to 10,000 monthly visitors in January 2009.

Now, knowing Seth a little bit, I think he might not be upset by this.  Small is the new big to him, and many times he is in favor of more active and tight knit smaller communities and says they are more powerful than larger less connected and active communities.  I wonder what the future holds for Triiibes?  I wonder if the 10,000 people now visiting the site are a lot more active than the 35,000 that were visiting a few months ago.  I wonder if a year from now Triiibes will be a success or not?

Do you know of any examples of niche business online communities?  What are they?  What made them successful?  What gave them long term staying power?

Tags: ,

COMMENTS

I will say I made some really great contacts on the site which will be with me for years. I learned a lot from the experience as well from others.  
 
When the petty remarks started to happen, I lost interest. Don't know if that's just a normalcy in small groups or what. Just seemed like there were a lot of carpetbaggers there as well as nit-picking.  
 
I'll still go check once a week, but I'm no longer really active there.

posted @ Sunday, February 08, 2009 1:00 PM by Desiree Scales

Hey Mike, I think your right about this. Seth really wants people to have the best possible experience out of his site and he wants people on their who are going to take that initiative to make the site an amazing resource. 
 
I like how the site is very user driven. There are a ton of people on their who are leaders and Seth is the leader of those readers. He doesn't micro-manage the site, he just puts it out there, inspires his user base and let's them run with it. 
 
I went to Seth's Triiibes launch in NYC--he made people jump through a lot of hoops to get there, but the ones who were there were stellar.

posted @ Sunday, February 08, 2009 1:43 PM by @MattWilsontv

Hi Mike, you and I joined triiibes at about the same time last summer. I'm still there and lovin' it. You're right about Seth not interested in quantity as much as quality. The Compete stats are a bit misleading because the bulk of the triiibes invites went out in August, explaining the huge spike.  
 
Triiibes currently has a membership of just under 4,000. Of those 4,000, about 350 very actively participate. This follows social networking's 80-10-10 rule. 10% actively participate, 10% react to the top actives, and 80% lurk or rarely participate. So what we're really seeing is about 700 people responsible for about 10,000 hits a month. That looks mighty fine in my book.  
 
To those who are not regular users of triiibes, the benefits are not easy to see. Triiibes was never meant to be a Facebook, a LinkedIn or a twitter. Seth Godin's sole purpose was to show people that they could grow as individuals, support and inspire each other, and become leaders. Seth has more than accomplished these goals - even if triiibes were to shut down today. But I can say with confidence, it has a long, long life ahead. 
 
C'mon back for a while and participate. You may be surprised. 
 
bonnieL 
triiibe on! 

posted @ Sunday, February 08, 2009 5:50 PM by bonnieL

Interesting observations. I hate to admit it, but I've been the same way. I dove in initially and was very involved in Triiibes. I went to the the event in NYC as well, and made some great contacts from it and the site. I still interact with many of them, just not on Triiibes. I hadn't even thought about that until I read this.  
 
Triiibes is still valuable. Whenever I do go back I always find some great conversations going on. I think we just get pulled in so many different directions, there comes a point where you have to choose where you will focus your SM time.  
 
Seth isn't on Twitter because he doesn't think he'd have the time devote to it to make it useful. Could it be we do the same? Instead of spreading ourselves thin we have opted for other SM outlets.

posted @ Sunday, February 08, 2009 7:54 PM by Andrew Weaver

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