DriveTribe is a thing, will you use it?

[99StockGT]

Seems like Facebook is a major sticking point for a lot of people so far, personally I'm not a fan of it either. With the inability to change your name to something Avatar like on forums it is definitely rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. Membership and content continues to grow though..

[Geeto67]

I have been playing with it this past weekend in what little free time I have. It's interesting to say the least. I signed up with a bunch of feeds with known content (e.g. petrolicious) and some with unknown content that I have never heard of before.

 

Good:

- easy to use. It is just a stupid simple content aggregator. If you know how FB works, then you know how this looks

- no ads or sponsors. Not sure how anybody is going to monetize things yet but it's nice to look at pictures without annoying popups and such.

- It's good looking, sorta. Rather it is simple and clean looking which makes it much easier to just see what you want. So far I haven't run into anything that isn't intuitive but I haven't started any Tribes yet, just subscribed and commented.

 

Bad:

- content is hit or miss. Actually it is a lot more miss than hit. There are tribes where all the content is just a repost of something found on the net. Even where there are original pictures most places don't really give you good write-ups. Since it is new, there really isn't a ranking system that you can accurately use separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

- There is no real way to monetize your content here unless you are already selling something. No revenue from ads, no "unboxing" events (because it doesn't have the following yet). Some of this will get worked out in time, but for now it's going to be a few really good tribes and a lot of bad ones because there is no incentive to try.

 

- hard to find some of the more interesting things because some of it is waiting to be approved by getting the 10 friends necessary to become a tribe. Austin, your tribe has more content than some of the approved ones and yet yours is not yet a thing.

 

- Members of your tribe seemingly can post content to your tribe. I don't mean comments, I mean articles. There is one tribe where the leader was basically putting up a daily post to stop his members from posting things about Miatas since he didn't consider them "vintage" for the purposes of his Tribe (vintage modders), and then he had to remove the articles. That's a lot of moderation work for someone to keep their channel on point and the potential for things to get out of control.

 

Overall it is a fun little platform, that requires little time investment to get some pretty decent entertainment. Some places seem to do it really right, like Petrolicious which uses their channel to post outtakes and different content from their website and youtube, channels, some do it ok where they post individual photos but lack articles to go with it, and a lot just churn the mill of Google for the sake of popularity, and some of your favorites (like Motor Trend) aren't even setup yet. Once you get it setup (which doesn't take long) it's a nice little time waster in 10-15 minute increments.

 

We will see how much better it gets.

[99StockGT]

There's a very simple setting that allows you to toggle your Tribe between free to post and Admin only, clearly this is still a bit of a learning curve. One thing I'm trying to figure out personally is the character limit of 500. For those of us who can get a bit descriptive or "long winded" some my might say, this is definitely a detractor. On the bigger builds like with the Z I'll be posting up tomorrow trying to get anything short of a parts list will take up that limit...or I do a short write-up with no parts list

[Geeto67]

There are some tribes that have articles posted but I can't tell if they are reposts from other places in the web or posted in the tribe feed directly.

[99StockGT]

It's going to definitely be a challenge to see how much unique/original content gets posted not just rehashing the same articles/posts. The character limit on our side has been the biggest challenge, there's only so much depth you can get in 500 characters.

[Geeto67]

I think I am going to have to start a tribe just to play with it. I just read a great article about AMG developing a new GT4 racecar that was way more than 500 characters. Maybe they lift the limits once you get your 10 people?

[99StockGT]

Could be, right now I'm having to edit and re-edit my posts in order to squeeze them into the 500 character limit. I DO see some of the bigger tribes that have full length articles so we'll see once we go live. Almost there!!

[Geeto67]

Could be, right now I'm having to edit and re-edit my posts in order to squeeze them into the 500 character limit. I DO see some of the bigger tribes that have full length articles so we'll see once we go live. Almost there!!

 

So...once you go live (get 10 members), and log in from a real computer (not the app on a tablet or phone) you get access to the studio where you can create longer articles unconstrained from the 500 character limit. It's pretty neat actually.

 

Honestly I am actually having a lot of fun with it. It's like facebook but without having to sit through your racist friends political memes, baby pictures, celebrities your friends meet, and chain letter requests. If you find the right tribes the content is actually solid.

 

Clay, now that I have it figured out and they added Email login instead of FB - if you want to give the CC&C page another go I can help you out.

[zeitgeist57]

Honestly I am actually having a lot of fun with it. It's like facebook but without having to sit through your racist friends political memes, baby pictures, celebrities your friends meet, and chain letter requests. If you find the right tribes the content is actually solid.

 

Clay, now that I have it figured out and they added Email login instead of FB - if you want to give the CC&C page another go I can help you out.

 

Your first paragraph - Facebook is that way because it's so open-platformed. My nieces/nephews and their friends sub 16-years old don't even use FB anymore...it's all SnapChat and IG...more focused in terms of content restriction. Same with Twitter and LinkedIn (bit LI is more the community...you add non-business noise like personal photos or political stuff and you'll be lambasted).

 

Second - Can a tribe be accessed through multiple users/user IDs like FB?

[Geeto67]

Your first paragraph - Facebook is that way because it's so open-platformed. My nieces/nephews and their friends sub 16-years old don't even use FB anymore...it's all SnapChat and IG...more focused in terms of content restriction. Same with Twitter and LinkedIn (bit LI is more the community...you add non-business noise like personal photos or political stuff and you'll be lambasted).

 

for the moment there are no ads, no spamming, and no commercial garbage. Is it coming? yeah probably but not right this minute. I would say it is a lot like Instagram except you can write articles and share lengthy content, videos, etc - not just a photo and a caption. Tribe leader has control over what's in their tribe from members to content. As for restrictions? I guess if it is not automotive related it will be removed, I have yet to see something that wasn't related to cars, bike, or planes/boats. There are some Tribes that do have porn on them but it's mostly cheesecake nudies of girls with cars/bikes.

 

Second - Can a tribe be accessed through multiple users/user IDs like FB?

 

Sort of. For right now there are only two options: Either the Tribe leader is the only one that can post, or everybody who is a member can post. There is no middle ground. So either it's open forum style, or your specific feed. I hear they are working to open it up so you can have multiple tribe leaders but for the moment it's all or one. The Tribe leader can always moderate so if someone is posting something inappropriate or spamming the tribe with their own tribe - you can easily remove it and curate the content that needs to be there.

[99StockGT]

Clay I would definitely get one going for CC&C, should be an easy way to post/share/discuss rides that show up and for people to find out who drives what. A lot of people will see a car or get a photo of it but not know who the owner is. Once the Tribe is built, should just be a day or two to get enough people on it to take it public.

[99StockGT]

So the Facebook requirement is gone, which should help drive membership, cross posting to Facebook is extremely easy and the article style formatting is very useful. I know I'm opening a can of worms here by asking WWCRD but...

 

Looking to grow our exposure online through this medium, aside from more content what feedback would you all give?

 

 

https://drivetribe.com/t/AE5ogh_mS5WMytnX07SdXw/WsYs3pd5TsObdSyNzkF6vg

[iwashmycar]

It looks pretty sweet.

 

Wonder if you could post MORE than just the cars as features....Like shop stuff....this is how we swap a set of coils on this set of coilovers....I dunno. Just spitballing.

[Geeto67]

It looks pretty sweet.

 

Wonder if you could post MORE than just the cars as features....Like shop stuff....this is how we swap a set of coils on this set of coilovers....I dunno. Just spitballing.

 

I don't know if you are asking austin directly (as in giving him a suggestion) or just generally but...

 

A lot of the early adopters were the glossy magazine feature types, however it is entirely possible to write a tech article if someone wanted to. On my channel I did a quick and dirty how to for painting a helmet with rattle cans using the app (which sucks to post stuff from) so it is completely possible. Just not a lot of people doing it.

[99StockGT]

I'm trying to use it as a platform for more indepth stuff not just reblogging Instagram stuff. A HUGE quantity of what you find on any of these sites is reposting/share/etc versus original content.

 

I can always just toss up quick teasers of stuff we have coming up or have done then follow those up with longer articles. Question becomes where is time best spent?

[Miller]

Is there any activity? I figured it was dead already.

[99StockGT]

There's activity but it's hard to say how much growth they are seeing in the site. I know a lot of people were put off by the need for Facebook login at first, that has since been removed as a qualification.

 

With no ads and none of the BS posts you get on Facebook it's a much more "gearhead" friendly platform but not particularly easy to find content to follow/get followed.

[Doc1647545523]

What is this Facelook of which you speak? Is that a thing now? Which button do I push to join?

 

http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/af208/trentrbrts/0723c2d51808b920cfa10755ff798e65_old-cell-phone-old-cell-phone-clipart_1300-957_zps2zhzn65f.jpg

[Geeto67]

With no ads and none of the BS posts you get on Facebook it's a much more "gearhead" friendly platform but not particularly easy to find content to follow/get followed.

 

The content searching is really a pain. Basically, internally the only way you learn about something is cross posting from something you follow. They send you emails about interesting channels but they could easily end up in a spam folder.

 

I found cross posting with facebook helped me recruit members pretty fast, but it's still hard to get visible. If you can get in the admin's feed though...you are golden. We had a huge bump in members when Hammond responded to something my friend wrote in the channel.

 

What is this Facelook of which you speak?

 

Doc....think of it like a constantly disappointing phone book. You look up your friends and it's all the people you like having the conversations you never want to have with them. ever.

[99StockGT]

It DOES seem like the best way to get exposure is to poach members off of the main posters ie. hammond/may/clarkson or the others but that seems a little shady. Posting in the open groups with something that's trying to point them to us..

[Geeto67]

Honestly we don't know how Hammond saw it because we didn't cross post it anywhere. He might have been looking for something about Seeley motorcycles, which my buddy owns one, and found his article.

 

I don't think there is anything wrong with the main feed or one of the more popular groups picking up something you wrote, but those people that post their links in your articles drive me batshit.