Hi, I’m founder and CEO at 6Tribes
I noticed that social media is increasingly spam. I had a hyphothesis that others felt the same way, so I started looking into it. And I found a wealth of online conversation around the growing dissatisfaction with existing social networks – the endless baby photos, sponsored posts, “6 amazing thing your never knew about hair loss”, talking in hashtags, the increasing amount of spam content filling your feed. I wanted to create something new, a neater uncluttered approach to social media where we eliminate the irrelevant and get straight to the good stuff. And so 6Tribes was born.
Instead of following people you went to school with, what if you could connect with people you didn’t necessarily know around the interests, lifestyles or topics you care about. Or, an interest-based network.
6Tribes connects you with people who are into the same things as you. Whether you’re into craft beer, love art, travel, food, having a midlife crisis or are into dragons, 6Tribes will connect you with people who share those passions and interests.
6Tribes started as a team of 4 back in November 2014. We launched as an MVP in the UK in late May 2015. We’ve grown to a team of 12, based in Southwark, London. Around 4 weeks ago we flipped the app store button to make 6Tribes available globally.
A few weeks ago we added the ability for anyone to start their own tribe, and within a few weeks there were over a thousand new tribes ranging from topics like Craft Beer to lifestyle / mood tribes like Be Unordinary. We love the wonderfully creative tribes like From Where I’m Standing, where people just post pictures of, well, where they’re standing.
Interest-based networks aren’t a new idea, there’ve been many attempts at creating interest-based communities over the years. In some cases they exist as individual apps and web sites for a particular interest, in other cases companies have looked to create a single destination that’s an umbrella for a range of interests. There are also web-first sites like Reddit. But until now there hasn’t been a mobile-first experience that hits the mark.
We hope to change that, this is the beginning of the next step in the journey for us. We’d really appreciate you trying out the app and letting us know your thoughts. We release new versions every two weeks, your feedback becomes the next release.
Please ask me anything here or DM me at @anthonyrose
Great post, Anthony. Really great design on the app, and great concept in the tribes (I'm in start-ups, history and thought leaders). What kind of content do you hope to get posted in these groups? Articles? User conversation? Do you have a sense of the users that you've had join the service so far: enthusiasts who curate content and driver conversations; or consumers of content?
A few friends and I tried to build a web-based interest social network a few years back, so I'm really interested to see how 6tribes and this space overall evolves.
Javaughn, thanks for the laser-focussed insightful questions that go to the heart of what sort of interaction you want to enable or encourage in any user-to-user app. Broadly, our experience shows there are two directions you can go:
1. a curation tool to upvote the most relevant / best content, so the app becomes a feed of content for you.
2. a place where you dive in and talk with others, a community that may be talking about global warming or last night's Mr Robot
Each leads to potentially different product choices, and the question is if you need to place your bet on one vs. the other, or you can provide a place for both.
For example, the Social Avenue and Be Unordinary tribes have people posting really great, sometimes deep, sometimes challenging, throughts. They're not necessarily posts that could get ranked Reddit-style, but there is a sense of order and rewarding great posts.
On the other side there's TV Trash Talk, filled with real-time chat about shows on UK TV each evening. And there it's all about being in the moment - you want to get together with others and post things that intentionally *won't* fill your social media stream.
So we have some of each right now, but with a vision of community more than a small set of premium posts.
Does that answer the question?
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Ditto
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