What is a Tribe?

We had an interesting discussion today in the comments on a post from last night. I wanted to bring it top-level for those of you who do not dig into the comments.

I have edited it down to only include the parts that talk about the nature of a tribe on the web. I am not sure that “tribe” is the right word but since we do not have any other suggestions yet, we will continue to call this group a tribe for now.

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Joanna Young

Interesting Luke, including the use of the word ‘tribe’. I hope that doesn’t sound exclusive – I’d like to think what you were talking about was a network of people that was constantly changing and developing through new relationships and friendships.

I think for me the main thing was that Robyn, Robert and Brad all offered support and encouragement at a point when I was finding my feet. That certainly helped me to grow and blog with greater confidence.

I hope I do that for others who are starting out with something new, including finding their feet with new things like Twitter.

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Ulla Hennig

Joanna,

You definitely do! You gave me such a nice welcome at your blog that I felt at home there immediately. I very well remember the various times when you encouraged me to try out new things. I knew that the people who were your friends could be mine as well, and so I got acquainted with the other ones.

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Luke Gedeon

Joanna,

I did not intend to imply exclusivity by using the word “tribe.” Tribes are characterized by being very informal but very close-knit. Not close in the sense that they are hard to join, but in the sense that they are hard to leave.

A tribe has many very magnetic personalities. They talk to each other a lot, and decisions are made in an almost herd-like, consensus form. One person starts running and everyone else just follows along trusting the leader du jour to lead them somewhere good.

A tribe also has no defined boundaries. You might be able to find the center, but you will never find the edge, so in that sense it resembles a network and is completely open, but there is one big difference between this group and the typical network.

In the typical network no three nodes will have more than 20% of their first level contacts in common. More than that is simply not efficient. What I saw on Robert’s and Brad’s blogs was that at least 50-80% of the comments were coming from people who commented on both blogs. Then I visited Ulla’s and Robyn’s and yours and noticed that not only were Robert and Brad commenting on your blogs but each of you were commenting on each others blogs. And the same holds for several other blogs in what I started calling a tribe.

Maybe we can find a better name for this group, My thought is that there is something special here. Most blogs are part of a loose network with a lot of one-way conversations, or one-to-one links with no mutual friends. That, or they are a fan-club, where thousands of people visit one blog and add comments there. Any time the “monarch” wants to talk to someone he replies in his own comments or writes a new post, and all conversations are kept in one place.

Can you, or anyone else listening in, think of a better name for this type of group? I never was fond of the term “tribe” but could not think of anything else.

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Joanna Young

Luke, thanks for that elaboration. Will be interested to see what other words people come up with.

@ Ulla: Thank for these words: “I knew that the people who were your friends could be mine as well”. It means a great deal to me.

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Jackie Cameron

March 10th, 2009 Edit This

Hi Luke – what a fascinating experiment. I cannot remember whether Robert. Brad or Joanna came first but they all arrived around the time I started blogging seriously – beginning 2007. I would now consider them friends. They have been supportive in challenging times – like face to face friends are. They share – knowledge, links, contacts – and from that I grow. I feel privileged to be part of this “tribe”.

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Terro

March 10th, 2009 Edit This

Hi Luke,

I noticed right away the connections between the the “tribe” you are studying, and I began checking the different blogs frequently and commenting when I had something to say. I’ve really enjoyed this even though my original motivation was self-promotion.

I love to write and so I blog now, but I really want to think someone is reading me. Of course I have family and friends who are mostly stealth followers (if they comment, it’s in a personal email), but I’d like to have wider ripples.

Anyway, good luck to you on your study even if the mathematics of it boggles my mind. Your website is now on my list to read and ponder regularly.

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Lillie Ammann

March 10th, 2009 Edit This

Luke,

I’m honored that you would include me in the tribe. I regularly read and comment on several of the blogs listed above, and several of them comment on mine. However, the percentage of my comments that come from tribe is quite small.

From my last two months thank-you-to-commenters posts (February thanks hasn’t been compiled yet):

* January: I had a total of 171 comments from 128 commenters; of those 2 comments (1%) were from 1 tribe member (<1%) listed above.

* December: I had a total of 178 comments from 104 commenters; of those 7 (<4%) comments were from 4 tribe members (<4%) listed above.

I tend to comment on tribe members’ blogs much more often than they comment on mine.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not certainly not arguing that I’m not part of the tribe-I consider it an honor to be part of a group that includes the outstanding bloggers and exceptional people listed above.

This is a fascinating subject. As I looked over my lists of commenters, it seems that I’m part of several different tribes, some of which overlap somewhat. I see many of the same names on blogs I comment on but haven’t paid a lot of attention to which bloggers are in which groups.

You’ve intrigued me-now I’m going to be watching for these different tribes, networks, relationships.

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Ulla Hennig

Luke and @all,

first of all,I am proud to be a member of “the Tribe”. “Tribe” for me means a feeling of belonging, of sharing similar values, which doesn’t necessarily mean similar political beliefs. These values are: making other people feel welcome, honesty, friendliness, trust, believing in the power of words when they are supported by actually acting according to them.

For me it is a feeling of knowing each other quite well – Brad, Robert, Karen, Joanna and Rosa. And this feeling exists although there are hundred of miles between them and me and although my native language is German and not English.

I hope I am not getting too sentimental – but that’s a part of the tribe, too, ain’t it?

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Brad Shorr

Hi Everybody, I would like to echo Joanna’s comment that there’s nothing exclusive about the notion of “tribe”. It’s always been come-one-come-all, and I think all the other bloggers I know in this conversation feel the same way.

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Luke Gedeon

March 10th, 2009 Edit This

Lillie,

You mentioned that the people I have listed so far make a very low percentage of your commenters, however this is just the start of the list. There are several others I am sure should also be on the list, but have not had added them to the list yet.

Oh, one other thing. I do not suggest measuring inclusion by number of comments, that is just a trend I spotted. The way I measure inclusion is a personal connection to several others already in the group, which can be seen in comments, twitter, or several other forms of communication. Your connection through twitter was a big part of my seeing you name often enough to connect you with the rest of tribe. I think the defining characteristic is the dense network of multiple mutual friendships.

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