My reservation about the Tribes is simple – they contradict the philosophy that so many a-list bloggers write about: that Web 2.0 and 3.0 when it’s born are about personal choice, about being yourself – sing your song with your voice and add value in your own way.

Networking with like-minded people is one thing; joining a tribe where the price of non-conformity is to find yourself booted out is a totally different matter.

Ok – I’ll get my coat and leave now before I fall off my soap box and break something valuable in Lis’s emporium!

Love and Light

Nic

My response was to the part of your post that talked about “following the crowd” and “being part of the group”, not about whether 3T was actually worth the money.

Being a part of a “group”,”tribe”, “clique”, or whatever you want to call it is a matter of choice. Being an atheist myself, I can completely relate to feeling out of place in religious situations. At the same time, I’m finding resources and connections I can use inside the Third Tribe, which was the whole point of my participation. People who blindly follow groups simply for the sake of “being part of something” have other issues that they need to address, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who decides to sign up for something enthusiastically is doing it simply for the label. If we’re going to talk about labels (and I’m honestly not pointing fingers, because this post didn’t really come across like this) then keep in mind that there are often just as many people who play the rebel for the same reasons. “It’s cool to be a rebel”, etc.

Essentially, my point is this – if you make your choice as an individual who is doing it for their own sake and not for the sake of following others, then who really cares about what the actual choice is? I’m finding value in the choice I made – you didn’t, so you made a different choice. Both are right in their own way.

Thank you for responding to my comment. I guess I just don’t understand why what they are doing is a bad thing or why you think it is “just” a marketing ploy. I agree that it’s certainly a marketing tactic. But I also think that they may be onto something valuable as well. I have clients who seem to hate marketing but they like the kind of relationship marketing advocated by Third Tribe folks. I don’t think that necessarily means those ideas are right for all niches though. In some niches in which buyers are desperate and only have one problem they want solved they don’t want a relationship with you, they only want a solution and even list building is a waste of time in those niches based on my testing.

Maybe I’m missing something here but when I read your post and then read about Third Tribe Marketing I get the sense you are writing about something other than Third Tribe Marketing. It sounds like you are writing about the concept of conformity and assuming that The Third Tribe is a conformity movement.

From what I understand the Third Tribe concept describes a mentality that some people have. It describes a set of beliefs that various people have arrived at independently about how to market themselves and their products. And while some people may have been persuaded to become Third Tribers, the goal isn’t to convert people to this way of thinking. It’s to gather up people who already believe and allow them to help each other.