I can't begin to tell you how difficult it is to read some of the discussions going on about our new flagging policies and TOU. It is fairly typical for people to complain about change here, but this is a different sort of complaining. And it is a sort that we knew we would have to endure. What's different this time is that the complaints are more cultural than technical. If someone doesn't like the new colors, layout, features, or masthead, it is normally just a matter of time before someone else chimes in with "hey wait a minute, I like the new layout." It is rare that work we do on the application actually makes it *worse*. There is always a period of adjustment that goes along with change, and normally within a week things settle down a bit and return to business as usual.

The flagging thing is not simply a technical change or a new feature though. This one is a change that for many will irreparably damage their ability and willingness to participate in our community, but not because we have changed the logo again or made the system unstable. This change bites into the Tribe culture that has been building up on its own over the last 30 months.

When the alternative lifestyle tribes began to turn up on Tribe, my attitude at the time was to treat tribe like I treat Mission St. On Mission St. right around the corner from my house there is a porn shop that is open at all hours. I have walked by it more times than I can count. It is my choice any time of the day or night to walk in to that store, and to browse or buy, or perhaps hang with the locals. Or, I could just walk right on by. My choice.

If I walk the other direction, up to Valencia St. there is a Good Vibrations store. Is it upscale porn or simply "sex positive"? It certainly is much less intimidating than the Mission News (the aforementioned porn shop) but still carries content of sexually explicit nature. Both of the stores have Rated X material, both of them are right out in the open doing a brisk business. As an individual I may choose to walk in to either store at any time, or I may choose not to. I may even choose to find the content morally reprehensible, and to run up to Mission Dolores and bathe myself in holy water whenever I cast my eyes open these stores. But I never thought it was within my rights to deny the owners of those businesses their spot in my neighborhood.

Tribe being Tribe has taught me *a lot* about the world around me that I did not know before. And I have met people in my neighborhood that I never would otherwise have had the opportunity to meet - I simply do not lead an "alternative lifestyle". But I do feel like a more complete, more informed individual now that I have met these people. I don't know if I will ever go to Burning Man, but I might. I don't think I will tie anyone up or get tied up myself, but you never know. The point is that live and let live is a great way to achieve harmony in your daily life.

Tribe has now decided to "open up shop" for real. For our first 2 years we lived completely off of Venture funding and were largely left to our own devices to come up with new ideas to make the site better. Frankly I think we only did an ok job at that, and we never really did figure out how to make a sustainable business out of it. Generally speaking, our investors have been pretty happy with things. Not thrilled (like perhaps a MySpace style exit would have made them) but not unhappy (like a Friendster style flameout would have made them) but they, and we, are still looking for the right formula to make this business real, and viable for years to come.

Mark Pincus stepped down as CEO in acknowledgement of the fact he was not going to be able to do accomplish that. It was his decision to make, and he did the right thing. That change at the highest level brought about a shakeup at Tribe, where a few more people (including our last remaining founder) left the company as well. Over the next 6 months, starting in April or May and extending through October, we began experiments around generating revenue on Tribe.net without making many changes to the application itself. This mostly meant hooking the site up with ad networks, signing new listings partners to fill in our jobs and apartments listings categories, and buying search engine traffic to certain revenue generating pages. All the while, we were debating internally about the mature content issue. Not only what to do about it, but whether it was an issue at all. I guarantee you that every debate you see on Tribe.net today about the new policy has already been had AT LENGTH internally at some point over the last 6 months.

For me, what it boils down to is we have opened up shop for real, and we have decided that we aren't the Mission News and we aren't Good Vibrations. That is just not what our business is. We never really told anybody that WAS our business, but with the people we attracted it somehow became perceived as being our business. This doesn't mean we won't be a cool business - there are many other shops that sell good books or art or clothes, and everyone - EVERYONE - is free to go into those stores and enjoy being there. There are just some things you can't do in there.

So what's next for Tribe?

Well, once we are by 12/20 we will be having another release early next year that will significantly change the look of the site. The navigation will be simpler to understand and the My tribe.net page will give you more access to all of the things you can do on Tribe. After that, we will be embarking on a whole new round of innovation around Tribes. This will include new syndication options, so that you can syndicate your tribe discussions out to other web sites, as well as content import and customization options. These things are all still in the early design stages, but we are all very excited about these changes to say the least. We understand that the best thing about Tribe is the tribes, and we want to make them as useful and leading edge as possible.

Perhaps it is best to say that we are a technology company with a cultural component, and not a culture company with a technological component. I hope that this all makes sense to you all. I will be very sorry to see people go if that is what it comes to. But these are the tough decisions that need to be made in order for us to make progress as a business.