For some time the idea of "tribe rings" has been out there, discussed on and off by people in search of finding other ways to connect interests together. The ideas of a tribe ring is provides tribe moderators a way to explicitly create links to other tribes around a common set of interests. You can then imagine, say, a tribe about camping linking up with tribes about camping in Northern California, tribes about snow camping, or tribes about gourmet camp cooking. The obvious benefits here are

1) a self-maintaining taxonomy of tribes would begin to emerge and
2) cross over tribes (like the gourmet camp cooking tribe) could be linked with both a cooking tribe ring as well as a camping tribe ring, allowing for more fluid navigation through a set of interests.

However, there is another more subtle (and perhaps more difficult to implement) application of this idea if "membership" within a ring is taken into account. This idea stems from a conversation I had with Korin this past weekend, as well as an experience that Patti had at a conference. In fact, the 2 events that happened were on absolute opposite ends of the social spectrum, but could easily be services by a more secure notion of tribe rings.

First, Korin and I were talking about how useful an application like tribe.net could be to a large, project-based company like Accenture or IBM. If members are employees and tribes are projects, then right off the bat you have a great way of keeping current and historical information about what projects you have worked on, discussions about those projects, and how you are related to another member in case you are looking to staff a project and would like to get an referrals through your network for individuals with particular skills. Now Accenture would not be one bit excited about the idea that all of their projects would be available online for anyone to see, and we have in place the notion of private tribes to account for special interest groups that don't want to be seen by all who join the system. But imagine if an entire tribe ring was private, not just the tribe, allowing members of the tribes in the ring to freely browse through the tribes that make up the ring. Unless you were in a tribe in the ring, you would not be able to see anything in the ring, nor would you be able to see on the profiles of those in the ring any of the stuff that pertains to the ring.

This last point is the segue into Patti's weekend experience. It is probably not a secret that tribe has a pretty big penetration into the BDSM world (huh huh). It doesn't take a whole lot of tribe-surfing to find something that you may not want to see, if that isn't your cup of tea. This past weekend, Patti ran into someone who is into the BDSM scene and, while chatting about tribe had 2 other people (also BDSM types) at the same time overhear and say in amazement "you work at tribe?!"

So, to be in a room of individuals who share a common (albeit *extremely* non-mainstream) interest and to have many in the room know of tribe and be fans speaks to the usefulness of the site to join those with common interests together. However, the very interest itself limits tribe in a couple of critical ways. First, the usefulness of the site for some people is hindered. Is tribe where I will put on my BDSM face, or is tribe where I want to put forward my less kinky self and try to network with the "normal" people. And for the "normal" people, is tribe a place where I really don't belong? Second, the marketability of the site is impacted because with such interests so relatively easy to uncover, even with the mature checks in place, there are certain advertising and marketing partners that simply cannot have anything to do with us.

But with the "private tribe ring" idea in place, all of this can be addressed in a way that allows those into the scene to be able to freely mingle without necessarily freaking out those that are not in the scene. Rings could even be set up as securely gated communities, or as open door communities - but with only one door. In this way, we control entry into the ring at one point (and charge admission at the door?) and if the community is so inclined, people may wander around and look all they want. Or, in the Accenture use case, we would simply prohibit anyone entry who is not in a tribe in the ring. Thus, it becomes more a question of granting tribe membership that would allow access, and this is an area that we need to work on anyway.