Why Tribe and not Bhuz or other places?

[Carmine]

Hey All,

I am quite addicted to tribe myself. Why is everyone using Tribe and not using Bhuz or MySpace or FaceBook or other sites that offer community features, message boards, profiles. etc.

-Carmine

[JoY Hellaballoo]

Hmmm-- good question. Actually I think MySpace stinks---but Face book is certainly underutilized for sure.

BHUZ is ok, but its not as purty.....:)

[Carmine]

I think tribe is the cleanest/prettiest/etc.

Tribe is more.. well.. tribe based... based on message boards. MySpace ("my" being the most important part). Is about profiles really...

I have left a whole bunch of tribes lately because they are just full of ads... I found about 10 tribes I was on that the past 8 to 10 messages (or more) were just ads for shows and classes.

I wish there was a better way to do online advertising besides sending messages to every tribe, myspace, facebook, email list, etc.

-Carmine

[Peregrinekt]

I use facebook for 'real life' people like family, school friends, friends who are not into bellydance. oh, and playing scrabble. and though I have had a bunch of bellydancers add me on facebook lately I would rather have a regular profile and a bellydance profile if everyone moves to facebook just to keep things separate.

I really dislike bhuz alot.

I think everyone is on tribe because there is just such a massive accumulation of somewhat easily searched archives of stuff from years and years of usage.

there was a discussion on biz of bellydance tribe (!!!) about geographical distribution of workshops where the other KT wanted to make a website/database for events which would plot them against GIS data to see how far apart and how often things happen which could presumably be a handy promotional site too... but that doesn't exist, yet obviously...

[Ottavina]

My own personal two cents - I love tribe's format. The homepage with all the groups, telling me what's new, how many new posts there are in each group, the photo organization, the related tribes section - it's all good. Ning is okay, I haven't really gotten into bhuz, and the networking sites, oh, I just want to leave them for what they are and have real discussion forums.

I think tribe also appealed because it was possible to create a web pseudonym without being too detectable under one's own name. That was important to me when I first started dancing, and I'm caring less about that, now.

I don't mind Livejournal groups, so much. How about that?

[Zareen]

Tribe's format is the easiest to use, easiest to find things like groups, people, postings, etc. It's easy to show photos on tribe. I love tribe's format and I love that there are other kinds of groups there besides bellydance. I've made many good friends on tribe and if tribe goes away, we will be scattered, some here, some there. A lot easier to hold a conversation there with a group than anywhere else.

I have not tried live journal, so I can't comment on that, but I don't like Bhuz or facebook as well as tribe. And I completely detest Myspace. What a piece of crap.

[stephanie]

I've never tried Livejournal - I really like the interface that we have on tribe and the people I have come to know over there (I've even hooked up with people from my long ago past - people that I am glad to get to know again too!). I think this is a pretty good answer to a tribe demise - the chats work well and you can edit your responses here. I have hooked up with some people on Facebook but (again) not everyone that I know over on tribe...

[yeshes devi]

There is a spirit to Tribe, that I have not seen in many other places. There is a focus on artistic and spiritual interests there, and while it is very rich with belly dance interest, it is not the only topic (as may be the case in sites like Bhuz). I see so many culturally creative people on Tribe. I can learn so many things and hope some of the creativity rubs off on me there as well. ;)

The only other online site that could I think may become similar to Tribe is Gaia.com. It has almost no BD interest though, *so far* (nudge, nudge) -- it has only one BD forum that is virtually devoid of traffic. Gaia is generally smaller still I think than Tribe. But the interface is not dis-similar and it is oriented towards a more "culturally creative" population as Tribe is... maybe even more so. I can learn there too. ;)

I tried to sign up for Myspace once, but it seemed like, ok, now that I have a profile, where do I go now to interact? It didn't seem as intuitive as Tribe seems to be to me, anyway. Perhaps.... Tribe thinks like I do? ;) LOL

On the other hand, there has been a down side to Tribe for me, too -- which is I can spend too much time on there rather than doing my own work! Hence I have also concluded from time to time that Tribe is the "opiate of the culturally creative masses." ;) Just think of how much more time we have to practice and other creative pursuits if we are not on Tribe (and not here, bitching about it being down... ;) )?

[Etana]

I stumbled into tribe while doing some kind of google search about 2-3 years ago.

;-) I can barely find my way out now :-)

I'm not interested in the others - simply 'cause tribe suits my purposes for now. Should it belly-up, then I'll meander around and find something.

[Shahlah Sutra]

I stumbled on it to in a similar way but didn't actually join until another dancer recommended I try it. It's definitely helped connect me to so many people, I would be really sad if that's gone and I lost all those connections, I guess I'll have to link those friends here so I don't lose touch with them.

[Tehara]

Can't say it any better than many of you already have:

Better format for keeping in touch, better layout
More sophisticated members-- better discussions
Big connections with artists/dancers/ musicians
A real community feel

[Juicy Zara]

Tribe for me is just old habit plus the plethora of belly dancers. I actually don't like the functionality of Tribe- there are two many roadblocks to getting info out to people. The format seems pretty old school. I don't spend much time there these days. But there are a lot of creative and interesting people and discussions on Tribe- more so than other places. Never got into Live Journal. Facebook is much better for getting info re events out and I really like the bookshelf and other gadgets. I use linkedIn for professional stuff. And there are tons of belly dancers on myspace- it has grown quite a bit in the last year with respect to the belly dance community. For myself, my troupe and Tribal SDstyle- we are using multiple community sites in addition to our website-Tribe, Ning, Facebook and Myspace.

Oh Bhuz and LARaqs are good if you are interested in using paid advertisement for promoting events. Bhuz discussion groups still seem anti-Tribal to me- but I digress...

[Helen]

I liked Tribe over Bhuz because I enjoyed many of the non-dance related tribes on Tribe, although many of those tribes became very quiet over the summer.

I have a MySpace page, but never messed with MySpace much and never signed up for FaceBook because I was comfortable on Tribe, and didn't really have time for yet another electronic forum.