Via Triberr? No Thanks.
If you needed another reason to dislike people who can’t take criticism, I’ve got one for you. We hear a lot about authors who behave badly to reviews of their work. Natch, we aren’t the only group.
For those who don’t know, according to Google, Triberr “is a website for bloggers interested in increasing their reach.” Per the web site, its mission is “to empower groups of bloggers to effectively generate traffic, exchange content, and build engagement around their blog.”
Some more background. Please bear with me for a minute. I promise there’s a reason I’m explaining all of this.
How it works? According to Amberr Meadows, “Triberr is an online blogging and social media platform in which you join together with groups of other bloggers sharing similar interests. All of you agree to share each others’ tweets and syndicate your content to your combined number of followers. My current reach is 2,000,000 Twitter followers.”
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”)
Yesterday, I explained to a (thankful) author these same instructions. It was another reminder to me that a lot of people dislike the app, as the instructions have been retweeted by many people. So… I sent out a message encouraging people to rethink their Triberr usage. (Use the app or don’t use it. I’m blocking it, so honestly, it no longer affects me and you’re wasting your time trying to snag me.)
Nowhere did I ask for a commentary from Triberr developers on its app. Didn’t ask them to join the conversation. No invite whatsoever. But, one of their developers decided to chime in. Meet Dino Dogan.
I’ll sum up my conversation with him after each screen cap. @jeffekennedy asked me a question and this is how I responded.
Unprovoked and right afterward, Dino chimed in. (Please note that our names at the end of the tweet. This’ll be important later.)
Seems pretty self-explanatory. I’m not harshing on Dino. Just his app.
Most folks don’t look at their twitter feed for an extended period of time? Then who are all these Triberr tweets supposed to be reaching? And how?
Whoa. Back the train up there for a second. He’s telling me that I shouldn’t be reading all of those Triberr tweets now. He apparently knows what’s best for an author and how to promo, build a brand, etc. Because he’s an author too. Hmm…
Yes, well… since we’re giving out unwarranted, unsubstantiated advice, I thought I’d chime in too.
Huh? WTF… oh wait. Remember how I asked you to notice that he put my name at the end of his tweets? Well, listen up for those you don’t realize. By doing this, Dino is sending this tweet to all of his followers. If they’re not following me, they won’t be seeing when I respond to Dino because I use his name at the front of each tweet. As a result, to his followers, it looks like I’ve apologized to him. Niiiiice.
I did block him as promised, but sent out one final tweet to my followers about our conversation.
I didn’t see his response (since he’s blocked) until I’d decided to go back and screen cap the conversation. This ladies and gentleman, is the person representing Triberr. One who admits he’s not a professional.
Thing is, I’d already gathered that.
Dang. And people harp on authors behaving badly. Triberr has lost it’d appeal, I’m afraid.
By putting your name in front of his tweets, he was also completely misrepresenting the conversation. There was no reason for him to even respond to you since you hadn’t tweeted him. I agree. He needs to work on his customer service skills and learn to accept criticism. As someone who was an app/web developer for too many years to admit in public, I can tell you without doubt that the course he should’ve taken is to note how his app doesn’t work for some and try to find ways to make it better. He may never have found a way to make it work for you in particular, but he could work on improvements.
I was on Triberr for a while. Enjoyed it while I was there. Met a lot of great new people. I did my best to use it responsibly and not send out a ton of RTs a day. I left because of time commitments and frustrations with having to manually import every single post I made.
If I were still a member and saw this? I would have left. Not only because of his complete lack of professionalism, but because of his complete lack of knowledge about social media. Baffling that he’s a developer for an app that’s created to enhance your social media and be that clueless about how frequently people use twitter.
Well, even though the article is a negative slant on Triberr, I do appreciate the link back to me. Don’t be too hard on Dino. He’s really a good guy, and he does care a lot about bloggers, which is more than I can say for a lot of people on social media. He also is human and not required to be a professional, especially considering we use their free service and platform. He is required to be professional on his 9-5 job, but I’m sure you know how that can be.
No matter what capacity you’re operating online, it’s important to have a blog, and I’d think so most especially if you’re an author. You can’t be too bitter for those authors to want to promote their work (even if a lot of it is bad. Oh, yes, I admit, there is some really bad writing out there), and unless you do monitor tweet streams obsessively, Triberr isn’t burdensome to followers.
I’m partnered up with several different types of tribes to share content that many of my followers love, and I frequently am retweeted and have people comment on what I am sharing. I think if the tweets are quality, it’s not a problem. One thing to clarify on Triberr is we do agree to share tweets, but we have to approve every single thing before it is sent (unlike spam, which is just garbage sent to be annoying). This approval process is beautiful for me, because I refuse to share shit with my followers. Most of my tribemates rock, and the ones who don’t? I don’t share the tweets. If everyone operated the same and sent quality tweets, it would be no less spammy than scheduling some crappy quotes or installing “tweet old post” to auto-tweet your old posts. Same concept, different platform.
Anyhoo, thanks for the shoutout again. Cheers!
THIS!
I’ve never been a Triberr fan, and at first I thought it was because I just didn’t play on it to figure it out. But you’re absolutely right about the tweets…
Since I’m in Japan, I’m used to Twitter being pretty quiet in the afternoons, because that’s the middle of the night in the US. But because Triberr people schedule their tweets to go out, my afternoon Twitter stream is the same 20 links over and over and over and over again. All. Afternoon. It’s annoying, and that much spam makes me NOT want to visit those blogs.
I think in theory the idea behind Triberr could be a great one, but the way the app is built and in practice, it’s exactly like you said: authorized spam.
I’ve heard people say that they have to approve the tweets they send out for Triberr, but the bottom line is, 90% of the people using Triberr have their settings set to send out links every X amount of minutes. I’ve actually unfollowed people for sharing the links too close together.
I should probably just block the app on TweetDeck too.
Amber is right, Dino is a nice guy and he’s helped me troubleshoot things, but overall its too much.
Hey, Dee 🙂
You already know how I feel about the Triberr tweets, because you and I have discussed it several times on Twitter. I’m anti-Triberr, and have been since I was invited to join, and took the time to research the app.
I joined Twitter to connect with PEOPLE and build RELATIONSHIPS.
When one of my twitter-friends tweets a link, I think something like this: ‘Hey, Dee found this interesting enough to take the time to tweet about it, maybe I’ll take a look.’
When my tweetstream is jammed with automated tweets that all say “via Triberr”, it’s not the same. All that was required for that tweet to appear was somebody okaying the Triberr app to send tweets on their behalf. There’s no guarantee that the person I follow even read the linked items.
Using Triberr to tweet for you removes the personal aspect of Twitter, IMO.
I appreciate that people want to extend their blog/website reach. Heck, don’t we all want that? I just don’t think authorized spam is the way to do it.
Thanks to you, Dee, I no longer see Triberr tweets at all. And to those using it…if that is your sole vehicle for tweeting, I don’t see you anymore, either. Kinda sad.
Oh, and during one of my Twitter conversations about Triberr, Dino Dogan jumped in to tell me I was wrong about Triberr. As authors, we’re repeatedly told not to respond publicly to negative reviews about our work. That’s a lesson Mr. Dogan needs to learn, I think.
Bottom line—authors use Twitter differently than most businesses. Many authors use it as an all-day chatroom and a place to make business contacts.
Do I reach readers on Twitter? Yes. But I would guess that at least 50% of the people who follow me are authors or book bloggers, not readers.
Those authors don’t just follow me—they likely follow everyone else who’d be in my Tribe. Because romance writers/publishers/bloggers are all one big community. So if you use Tribrr as an author, you’re not extending your reach, you’re just sending out repeated tweets. To people who are ON TWITTER ALL DAY.
And yeah, it is annoying.
Daisy makes a good point. And also the comment he made about writers would do better spending their time writing? Well I guess he isn’t reading all the #1k1hr #amwriting or #wip tags is he. Writing is a solitary job, or at least it use to be. Now with the help of social media it becomes more like going to work, and getting to actually make friends. Twitter is our water cooler in a way. We are working, at our wips, supporting each other, and just all around giving each other a hand.
Amber said everything i thought. Seriously. I’m clicking through to her website next because she sounds like a smart lady. 😉
Truthfully, though, I think that it’s an education thing. Under my other name, I’m part of a tribe with Jenny Hansen. The first thing she did when she established the tribe was to hold a webinar to teach us how to use Triberr. The reason for that was that yes, it can devolve into unauthorized spam. When you approve the tweets, you can modify them, personalize them, and honestly, you get the most hits that way anyway, by making them your own. That’s how I do it, but that’s how I was taught, by someone who understood what the purpose of Triberr is. I don’t send anything thru that I wouldn’t have RTed in the first place, but not everyone is like me.
My original thought in using Triberr is that I would combine the blogs I read and make it easier to RT them through the Triberr system. These would be links I would RT anyway and therefore it wouldn’t crowd up my stream. Then Triberr had those growing pains and tweets flooded the stream and wow. What a mess. I can understand people getting fed up with it.
Dino is a good guy, perhaps misguided on how to deal on a customer service angle. I’ve talked to him over Twitter and in a webinar, and I think he did not express his views in the right way and alienated when he didn’t mean to. That’s my personal opinion.
As with any technology or social media platform, there is always a way to abuse the system. People look for those ways, or they’re just lazy. And they find them. There’s no quick solution to building an online following. it takes dedication and hard work, and it’s something that cannot be rushed.
Okay, I’m gonna stop with the rambly rambles now. I just wrote a blog post in your comments. 😉
Ha. Just realized I already have Amber’s blog on my blogroll. I already knew she was smart. LOL
Aside from him sticking his 2 cents in to start with…which I guess happens sometimes…I was okay with it until he made that rude comment about what writers should be doing…that’s kinda a “no.” And frankly, everything he said after that didn’t matter to me anymore.
Ah well…it’s important to know how not to tick people off if you’re into marketing…just sayin. LOL
I’m not sure I understand this whole idea of “Dino is a good guy”. Well…maybe he is. But the point is: he wasn’t to Dee. Being “a good guy” doesn’t excuse you from a rude thing you did. And I think this was really rude – discounting her opinion, dictating what she should be doing with her time, dictating how she should use Twitter, trying to make her feel bad about a perfectly valid criticism, and then finally – and worst of all – making it look as though she’d made an apology that she never actually did.
I don’t see what’s so good about any of that. And a truly good guy would have apologised, for any or all of this.
I’m going to glom onto Suzan and Amberr’s comments here…
I have advocated the use of Triberr if you are responsible about it. As a software trainer, I teach the people in my tribes to customize their tweets and not just act lazy all day long by hitting the Approve button.
No one wants to see the “social” leave social networking and I hate it when people approve a tweet for a post they haven’t even read. Once I realized that hashtags in my titles clog up the streams, I stopped using them.
I’m not in charge of what people do when I’m done with them, but I do encourage them to be responsible in their tweeting and to interact. Plus, there are hashtags like #WEwrite and #myWANA where no links are “allowed” and it’s all author chat, all the time.
On the Dino issue:
All of my interactions with Dino have been very positive and if we can’t get clarity in 140 characters, we switch to email. He’s dino@triberr.com if anyone needs to get hold of him for Triberr concerns.
That being said, there are a few things I try to keep in mind when talking to ANY tech guys:
1. Most programmers want to make people’s lives easier.
2. They talk to computers more than they talk to people most days.
On top of that, Triberr is in beta and they are making changes and upgrades all the time. Many of my less technical blogging friends have found that frustrating.
Like Suzan, I don’t want to overstay my welcome in your comments section. I love hearing tech discussions!
I have to agree with Moira. After he made that comment about writers and what they should be doing, I turned off. I don’t use twitter than much because of all the samey posts so I’ll be using those instructions to turn them off and I can actually use it!
This! I saw this RTed and had to come over 😉 I have blocked so many people for over using Triberr. Cannot stand how they’re all filling up my tweetstream with all their via crap.
I use Twitter for the convos and connections. Not endless promo which is what Triberr is. Not a fan.
But I’m a new fan of Dee! 🙂
When I first joined Triberr, I was a little lost as to what it was for and posted as much on Twitter. Dino responded with “It’s a way of getting more traffic. What’s not to get?”
Unsurprisingly I left Triberr very shortly afterwards and also blocked him.
Wow. We own a software company and I can guarantee you I just bookmarked this to show to my team tomorrow. LOL Customer service and manners without manipulation important much? Yes team they are. Thanks Dee. This is rather eye opening. A most excellent lesson is how far removed we technoids can be- as well as arrogant about how great our product is in spite of random and unsolicited feedback. Actually, the most important kind.