tribe.net

Unlike friendster, it's fast and looks great, but there is virtually nothing for dating purposes, you can't even search based on age or anything?

it's got best of my favorite two sites - friendster and craigslist. hope they dont charge like friendster is supposed to.

a super corporate design makeover that really sucks for a once thriving online community.

Real people discussing real topics. Great source of advice on anything you might be interested in.

Over the last ten years or so, I've dabbled in many cyberspace networking options such as message boards, forums, online dating and various e-mail lists. Tribe.net, however, is the best overall resource I've found for connecting with people. If you are looking for something very specific online, you might do better with a targeted message board or service (e.g. dating, finding a roommate, etc.). If, however, you are, like me, fascinated with the idea of networking in a very broad sense, and have many diverse interests, tribe.net can't be beat. Tribe.net has a cosmopolitan feeling. You are never confined to one particular theme; one click immediately shows you how Person X or Subject Y connects to Person or Subject Z, ad infinitum. Tribe.net operates on a notion something like "six degrees of separation." That is, when you join someone's tribe or become their friend, you see how you may be connected to them through other people. It's interesting how you can do a search and meet new people and find you are connected to them through people you already know. A warning: if you are an internet addict and/or have ADD type tendencies, you can waste a lot of time here! As of this writing, it's free.

I'm fairly new to Tribe.net. The community has been incredibly helpful. I was looking for hiking resources and joined a tribe about hiking in/around Washington, DC. I got a ton of suggestions on where to go. A couple of people have even talked about meeting in the real world and planning a hike. Pretty cool.

When Tribe started it was an ideal middle ground between the boring vanilla of Friendster and the absurd lowest common denominator populism of MySpace. I met some genuinely cool people in the first year or so. However, a couple corporate revamps later (including an official policy effectively banning free speech by prohibiting "adult" content and any criticisms of Tribe itself - the latter of which being what caused me to kill my account), as well as the inevitable problem with anything democratic [idiots are a majority], and now? Well, now Tribe is overrun with morons who think that just because they *CAN* say something means they *SHOULD* say something; usually, that 'something' is puerile, juvenile, pointless, non sequitur, or hostile. I used to love reading through the Tribes having to do with stuff I'm interested in, because the only other people there were there because they're interested in the same stuff. With the glut of morons, though, has come a glut of memberships in Tribes that people join just to impress others or think they're cool, despite their totally nonconstructive participation. If any Tribe execs should happen to ever read this, I just want you to know that if you ever had anything remotely idealistic and creative in mind - you f***ing blew it, big time. If, on the other hand, you were always about the almighty dollar... shame on me. I should've known better. Good-bye. I won't miss you, Tribe.net.

I've left tribe after a couple of years due to the truly horrible redesign. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Also, functionality has been reduced in an effort to increase page views. The new censorship policy is also garbage. Tribe's management was taken over last year by a former Pepsi and Proctor and Gamble exec, so the changes aren't a big surprise. Lame.