Is Mark Pincus Back at Tribe?
Michael Arrington
40 comments »
Update: This is now confirmed. Mark Pincus is back at Tribe.
This is just weird. Mark Pincus may be back at Tribe. Or someone may have just hijacked his Tribe account.
Mark was ousted from his CEO spot back in April (first spotted by Marc Canter, and Matt Marshall has a good summary here). New CEO Jan Gullet took over, and Pincus commented at the time “I don’t really enjoy being a day to day manager of people and projects…and it’s not something I think I’m particularly good at. Is this a case of another founder being pushed out, kicking and screaming? That’s never the case with me.”
But today Eran Globen found a listing on Mark Pincus’ Tribe page that says Mark is back, Jan is gone and other changes are on the way:
This is also here, with a different title.
The language and method of communicating this message is odd to say the least. But this is definitely Mark’s Tribe page. I emailed Mark the link and asked him if he has a comment. He replied “Yes in an hour” but I haven’t heard back from him after two hours and a couple of additional emails from me.
So I have no idea what this is all about, but Mark has my attention. And, there is a very good chance that someone simply broke into Mark’s Tribe account and posted this.
Looks like you have some code showing in your post. Unless that’s how he got your attention.
Thanks Jessep, code error fixed.
Judging by the language of the post, this has been written by an unhappy tribe user who got access to Mark’s account
There are lots of unhappy Tribe users.
TRIBE go back to last version
422 ratings since posting on Thursday, January 19, 2006
http://sanfrancisco.tribe.net/.....26page%3D1
Yes. Tribe is definitely lacking among other social network sites.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!
WELCOME BACK MARK! WE HOPE THAT TRIBE WILL BE MORE WELCOMING THIS TIME. WE HOPE IF IT IS REALLY YOU THAT YOU WILL LISTEN TO YOUR USERS’ COMMENTS.
maybe it’s just me, but I initially found TRIBE to be an unoriginal glorified Craigs List (CL) knock-off and recently it is still trying to be like CL with the Social tweak thrown in. Throw out the Social aspect and you have CL and the CL part of it is sad: CL NYC has 68677 sale items and Tribe NYC has 37 sale items; CL Boston has 50189 sale items and Tribe Boston has 22 sale items. That is just a snapshot- check out the community, job, housing etc. sections for more disparities
Does anyone even use tribe anymore?
Tribe = deadpool. Brand equity is pooched now; viral likelihood = low due to superior alternatives, negative associations.
Funny, there was no such reticense on many bloggers part about reporting that NBC was acquiring Tribe, but there is about this story…interesting. When Mark brings up the revolution of the ants, it’s probably true and fits his informal style.
If this is true, then this is the best way to do a press release ever. The phrase “big stupid masthead” makes me giggle.
Is it kind of weird to anyone else that the guy has an active profile page on a site he got booted from running?
Congratulations to Mark! If anyone can make this work it’s him.
On everyone commenting about the tone of his post, well he is an unhappy Tribe user right now and so it’s not surprising that he might say what he did. He always has the people who use his products at the forefront of his thinking and what he says reflects what many feel.
I’ve worked closely with Mark I can tell you that he’s unlike most other CEOs and is fearless about speaking his mind.
“there is a very good chance that someone simply broke into Mark’s Tribe account and posted this.”
This is not a drill. The revolution will not be televised.
So this is just a big TRIBE hoax???
Rex
Priceless quote: “I don’t really enjoy being a day to day manager of people and projects…and it’s not something I think I’m particularly good at”
Aren’t you the freaking CEO???? So what are you good at, throwing parties, bragging to venture capitalists, and registering domain names??? Well if so, job well done! Standing ovation.
mark is a total loooser….why would tribe want him back gods knows….
it makes sense if he enjoys creating but not managing, i own a coffee shop, i hire the right people, i don’t want to tell people what to do all the time, now i know a coffee shop is different then a social network, but i can understand what he said, it might just take him off his flow’ who knows, with metroproper.com i’m just taking on the coffee house mentality, smart productive safe place to work and play, giving the right people guided freedom to help the community grow with more tools and no external advertising, i’m sure i’ll saty stimulated with the fact it’s world wide and i want to go to all those places and tell them about it;]
“Aren’t you the freaking CEO???? So what are you good at, throwing parties, bragging to venture capitalists, and registering domain names??? Well if so, job well done! Standing ovation. ”
The real value of a CEO is in strategic vision, not day to day management. Managers are a dime a dozen. People who can accurately envision where technology and society will intersect, and how to make a product mesh with that intersection, several years down the road, are very rare.
Totally called this a few months back.
philip: how well is your coffee shop going to do if you sit around and have “strategic visions” of expanding the business, and don’t run the shop?
erik: yes, managers are a dime a dozen. GOOD managers are not. and you know what? people with “strategic vision” are a dime a dozen too. that’s the different between EXCELLENCE and mediocrity.
Skeptic, the operative word in my post was “accurately”. You are right, everyone has “vision”. Few have accurate vision.
Managers are a commodity. Some are good, many are not, few are outstanding. But without the goal, none of them have anything to manage.
Funny how someone wrote, “Judging by the language, it seems like someone broke into his account.”
I’m thinking, “Judging by the language, that’s probably Mark.”
If managers are a dime a dozen, why are so many businesses so poorly managed? Why is there an entire industry built around that fact that most people think their managers are jerks?
Mark is back, it’s not a hijacked account:
http://www.siliconbeat.com/ent.....ction.html
Not sure why they would want a loser like Mark back…isn’t that how tribe turned into the most undesirable social network on the web in the first place?
any change at tribe would be Too Little Too Late at this point. most of the interesting social aspects have moved on to http://www.free-association.net or other places and those folks aren’t likely to come back.
Tribe definitely has potential. Why they’ve been so stagnant is beyond me. Guess the investors are just not interested in making money.
Is Mark Pincus Back at Tribe? Who cares
Susan, do you really think anyone will buy the fact that the interesting social aspects have moved to free-association.net? Do you really think anyone believes that? Can you not see how much it hurts the reputation and credibility of your company to insult everyone’s intelligence like that?
Sorry I don’t usually respond to posts like these, but guess I’m in a crabby mood today.
GetReal:
right; where’s the ‘this is spam’ button?
Hey!
Friendster is back too. She just got back from rehab and is doing great!
cool
Why does it matter if Mark is back at Tribe? Tribe is going nowhere. Let’s talk about websites that are going somewhere.