Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago · 6 min. reading time · 0 ·

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Fun and Games in Start-Up Land: On Tribes, Clans, and Pamela

Fun and Games in Start-Up Land: On Tribes, Clans, and Pamela

ol IiloEs) uaIt's no big secret that Javier and Juan inspired me to start my latest, and (hopefully?) last, start-up . They seem to be having so much fun with beBee that I figured I wanted to get me a piece of that fun too.

I'm sure that future generations of b-school grads will study beBee's growth like I studied Apple's. In my day the big question was whether Apple would survive Big Blue's entry into the game. 

The general consensus back then was that Apple was done. At best, they would be chopped up into little chunks fit for nothing but pie. As I recall, only one prof got it right.

Yes, I'm a card-carrying member of the Old Farts' Club.

Yes, Start-ups are fun. 

Start-ups are also hard work. Start-ups can leave you scratching your head sometimes. 

I don't know how Col. Sanders did it at his age. Maybe it was the white suit? I wonder where I can find one. Or maybe an orange suit? I like orange.

But, I digress.

It wasn't just Javier and Juan who inspired me. It was all of you too. 

Yes, all 11,220,000 of you. 

beBee showed me the real power of cooperative work. It enables the crowd-sourcing of ideas and concepts. It simplifies discussion between professionals in many fields.

It creates a true gestalt.

I wanted that cooperative environment for my Web App. I wanted to harness its power not just for the App itself, but also for its users.

It may be called Social Media, but it's very Anti-Social. It's very much an every-man-for-himself kind of thing. (Sorry, but "every person for him/herself" sounds weird.)

Isn't it strange that social media is such a lonely exercise?

Must it be so?

I don't think it does.


I want a strong level of cooperation between users

Gloria Ochoa first suggested that I should make things easier for managers of multiple accounts. Accounts managed by one person or team should support each other easily and automatically. 

It was an obvious thing. We really should have thought of it ourselves. But, we didn't. Gloria did.

We implemented Gloria's suggestions. Multi-account managers can easily switch between accounts. They can also schedule supporting RTs between accounts. For now, it's only available on the "schedule by minute interval" method and only if sub-accounts actually exist. After it's been well tested, we'll implement it on all the other scheduling methods.

I've been going nuts trying to accomplish the same thing between unrelated accounts. I should be able to support whomever I want with retweets. It would be up to them to reciprocate should they wish.

To be completely honest, I was stumped as to how I could accomplish this easily and quickly. 

Then I read Pamela Williams' series of short stories about a Native American girl and her troubles. I used the header image from one of those stories here.

Pam got me thinking about the Native American culture. That brought me to thinking about Tribes. 

Wikipedia defines "tribe" as "a group of distinct people, dependent on their land (social media= our "land"?) for their livelihood, who are largely self-sufficient, and not integrated into the national society. (traditional media mix?)"

Hmm. Tribes usually work towards a common good. Sounds about right. 

That next brought me to the idea of clans. I turned to Wikipedia again. It says a clan is "a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship."

Hey, that fits too! Here, I don't even to add side notes in brackets!

I had my answer

Tribes are extended multi-family groups that share a common ground, interest, or support system. 

Great. Let's make some tribes. 

Call them topics, groups, or categories if you prefer. 

I'll call them Tribes.

So far, I created 7 Tribes. They're for general types of stuff. We can easily add, edit or remove them as the community feels it needs.

  • Content: Writing and Editing
  • Technology
  • Lifestyle
  • Fitness and Wellness
  • Business and Finance
  • Arts and Recreation
  • Travel and Hospitality
Clans are different

A Clan is something every user creates for him/herself. It's a list of Twitter handles of people they would like to cooperate with. 

They don't need anyone's permission. It's a strictly one-sided thing. (Which reminds me. It would be nice to know who added you to their Clan. I just added a note-to-self to add that feature.)

Here's my Clan in alphabetical order: aaron_skogen beBeeblogs beBee_EN ChefsUnDiet CherylSnapp DBGrinberg dkridingshotgun DrGarySharpe FedeAlvarezSm GloOchoa GuyLeChevalier InsightsOccur InvisiTech JavierBeBee Jimbobmur juanblanco76 KarthRajan Mamen_locutora medibasket mialis79 milosdjukic011 MSweetwood PaulCroubalian PepeUrries PIWillia QuimojoTweets riccikeeper RuffRidersPets sarahelkins urbiletaurrun‏

You may notice a couple of things about this Clan

One, they aren't all members of the beta-tester group. No matter, the system will check periodically. If/when, they join, I will automatically support them with tweets and retweets.

Hopefully, they'll return the favor.

Two, my twitter handle is in there too. Twitter now allows us to retweet ourselves. To be honest, I don't see the logic. Still, the default is to add each user to his/her own Clan.

Users have full control over their own Clan. You can delete a handle just as easily as you can add one.

There's no limit to how many members a Clan may have. We'll see if future users force us to impose limits. I hope not, but there are over 430,000,000 tweeps. 

Sooner or later, someone will get the bright idea to add a few thousand.

I don't know yet if I should care. Time will tell.

WTF does this all mean?

I'm glad you asked. The Tribe and Clan concept will feed the retweet system. A multi-account manager can already schedule supporting retweets from other accounts he/she controls. 

Here, we work the RT system in the opposite direction. We want the power to retweet tweets from accounts we don't control, using an account we do control. 

That's a mouthful. Did it make sense? 

Here's how it works

First, let's understand that we don't really retweet at all. Twitter has a specific definition of a ReTweet. That's not what we do for two reasons. 

One, Twitter gets upset when people automate retweets. Why? I don't know, ask them. Hey, it's their API.

Two, I don't like the way their retweets look anyway.

We don't ReTweet, we Tweet again.

Jim Hall

UnCret

The Writing Kind
Not the kind that's into Pottery Wheels

- White Papers

- Case Studies

- Blog Posts

- Copywriting

BE oT ICH TR 110

- Social Media AdminNo, it's not the same thing. 

It's what was called RT before Twitter's retweets. Some call it Old School RTs

Confused, yet? Let me explain.

Our "retweet" starts with "RT" and a mention of who it's retweeting. 

It adds a short text and a link.

It finishes with a full-sized image, and a hash tag from the rotation. Yes, you can cross-post your RTs.

One of the ReTweets at right is an example of what we do. The other is a Twitter retweet.

Which do you think has the greater impact?

You decide how many RTs you want to send out a day. There's no need to go nuts here.

I RT six times a day. That's ample. Six RTs a day makes 180 a month. That's about 8-10% of my average monthly posting volume.

That's a good rule of thumb. Of course, if you curate more than you produce, you might want to RT more often. 

For now, you can only RT other members' tweets. That will likely change in version 2.0. That's when we'll start looking at the impact non-member influential accounts have on a Tribe. 

Soon you'll be able to RT @MarketingProfs,  @CMIContent, or @elonmusk, for example.

Of course, Elon Musk's last tweet (Sunday, August 14, 14:00 EDST, GMT -4) was "Sunday morning: to bake or not to bake cookies -- that is not even a question. Definitely bake." 

I agree, Elon. Bake away! I have nothing against cookies. I love the darned things. I'm especially fond of the big chocolate chip ones you baked.

But still.

Clan First - Tribe Next

So, how would this work? Actually, it's easy now that we work from stored tweets. (Another user suggestion. Collaboration is great!)

Here's how I plan to implement it. If you have other ideas, feel free to add them in the comments. 

I'm really getting into this collaboration stuff.

First, the server checks my profile. It sees that I want to RT 6 times a day. It holds that aside. 

The server then checks to see if anyone in my Clan has tweets scheduled that day. It grabs one of each tweet it finds. So if Gary has 7 versions of the same tweet scheduled, it will only grab 1. 

It does that for every Clan member.

When it runs out of Clan members, it on moves to my Tribe, Content: Writing and Editing. There, it grabs more tweets until it has seven times the tweets that I asked for. 

Last, it grabs 6 tweets at random. It builds and schedules the tweets as Old School RTs.

All you need to do is to tell the system how often it should tweet for you.

And now for a request for input.

We're having a little argument over here. Some people say that we should have two RT pools, one for Clans and one for Tribes. In my case, I could, for example, choose to RT 4 times from my Clan and twice from my Tribe. Or, whatever mix I want.

What do you think? 

Some think it would add unnecessary complexity. Others say it would spread RTs exactly how users want. Someone with a large Clan may not even want to RT from Tribes. Or, someone else may not want to bother with a Clan and only RT from the Tribe.

Both ideas have merit. 

Thoughts?

My clunky first stab at it

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Blog Poets

About the Author

I'm a ghost but not the kind that's to pottery
wheels I'm the wnting kind

Toften wonder if Im a tech-savvy writer or a
writing-savvy technologist Maybe I'm both. As
one CMO put it, "Paul makes tech my bitch!
That might be going a hittle too far

QbeBee VIP, AmbassadorThis series is coming to an end. We are getting to the final weeks. It will soon be time to actually name this Web App and give it its new home.

I'll do that once the Tribe / Clan scripts are done and the final run through to the mobile web is finished.







"""""
Comments
#34
i would say...god speed..but with more style from the bebee ambassy: ahooòoooooooo...

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #27

#33
We're putting the finishing touches for multi-lingual support, Stephan. Soon, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German will be supported. Fingers crossed that it will be ready this week
GREAT stuff well explain, i can only measure the outside effects of the app...got a couple of hundred followers on twitter and more connections on linkedin...ivwas expecting the other way around and more connexions with bees and newbees from newbeesland. I am not in clan nor tribe but i love what Paul did with the experiment. SO PABLO...MY EVER LASTING GRATITUDE.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #25

#30
I'll be here, Lisa. To change to your name, go to your Twitter profile and click (boink?) Edit Profile.

Lisa Gallagher

7 years ago #24

Wow you're work is very impressive and I love the terms Clans and Tribes. I'm in Pittsburgh and I haven't forgotten about getting in touch. I will be home Thursday and Friday, one of those days good for you Paul \? Signed @mialis79. By the way, I tried to go in and add my real name to twitter eg, John White has his real name and @juanblanco76, am I missing something? How do I keep my user name and add my real name?

David B. Grinberg

7 years ago #23

#27
Don't forget a patent for that app, or whatever else is appropriate Paul \. Kudos to YOU, sir!

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #22

#26
Thanks, David. I am running into an issue, however. Our group of testers is small, so I have a hard time with this retweet system. There aren't enough tweets. I am opening the App to more testers. Right now, I'm taking a break from coding and am writing a how-to post. It will show how to join, how and why to use the App. and list best practices. Any who may be interested, keep an eye out. for it I would also like to have people who like to work from their phones. Right now, the App is about 60% cell phone responsive. Once everything is done, we will go get that missing 40%. It's a Web App, so it's platform agnostic. It works the same way for Android or iOS

David B. Grinberg

7 years ago #21

Paul \, thanks for including me in your clan. What you're working on sounds like an ingenious idea. Thus, coming from you, why am I not surprised? Your technical skills, out-of-the-box thinking, and ability to synthesize the complex and make it simple (or at least sound more simple), is impressive and admirable. I've shared this in the following three hives: "Engineers and Technicians" (249k), "IT - Information Technology" (149k) and, of course, "beBee in English" (10k). I wish you all the best and much continued success with development of this promising app.

David B. Grinberg

7 years ago #20

Paul \, thanks for including me in your clan. What you're working on sounds like an ingenious idea. Thus, coming from you, why am I not surprised? Your technical skills, out-of-the-box thinking, and ability to synthesize the complex and make it simple (or at least sound more simple), is impressive and admirable.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #19

I realize that we're getting pretty deep in the App's innards here, and that's not everybody's cuppa-T. Still, I'd like to respond to a private message I was sent. Someone noticed that RTs from a Clan and from a Tribe are 48 each. He/she said that was far too much. I agree. There is a script that limits RTs to 48 TOTAL. The script sets the appropriate limits in real time and notifies the user as they are entering their choices. (in jQuery if anyone cares) That's to allow for more RTs for those Tweeps who curate, not produce, content. Someone who predominantly curates content needs to be able to RT an awful lot more than us producers. Producers should probably stick below 10 RT a day. I stay at 6. There is no "right" number. It depends on how often you post and on how long you schedule your promo tweets out. Start low, build up. Try not to spam your followers into unfollowing you.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #18

#22
Yeah, I'm getting into some nitty-gritty here. The simpler a Web App is for a user, the more complex it becomes for the coder. Retweets can multiply your efforts in a big way. Ex: You have 278 followers. I have 15,000. John White, MBA has over 38,000. When we retweet, we "borrow" each others' following. The idea is to build a cooperative Tweeting platform. Tell the system how many times it should retweet and it will handle the rest. A Clan is a list of specific Tweeps. (Twitter peeps) A Tribe is a general category. You can specify how many retweets from each group. It's fire-and-forget. I'm open to a call anytime.

Sarah Elkins

7 years ago #17

Paul \, I'm totally lost, though I know what you're suggesting makes a lot of sense. Maybe we could have a call or FaceTime later this week?

Gloria (Glo) Ochoa

7 years ago #16

I meant to also say I like the idea that we can tweet to ourselves too...I think it is two fold..one...we can see it as other will see it and two, we can then retweet if we want to, to say someone specifically to make sure they see it. (ermm..hello? Bill Gates? Did you see my awesome tweet? here it is delivered specifically to you and it will be retweeted again via my BATA tomorrow!)

Gloria (Glo) Ochoa

7 years ago #15

#2
image is much more streamlined I think

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #14

#13
I added two screenshots fro two methods we can use. I'd love to get everyone's opinion on which they prefer.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #13

#13
I have a prototype written. It doesn't actually RT though. You, my dear beta-tester, can access it through your dashboard under Set Retweet Preferences. I don't like it. I think it's clunky. It asks you to select the hours when you want to RT, based on 1 RT per selection (24hr clock) I added a screenshot to the post If we just enter 2 numbers, #RTs from Clan #RTs from Tribe it may be far simpler. That way, if someone wanted to RT only from their Clan, they can enter 0 for the Tribe or vice versa if they want to only RT from the Tribe That would also remove the maximum 24 RTs for people who are more Curators than Content Producers. If you would like to specify the RT times, maybe we could use random times distributed within a specified range like we do for "Schedule by Daily Frequency?" Remember that we will need to cycle through every member to read his/her preferences. Then we cycle through their Clan. Then we assemble the tweet data, then schedule the RTs. Easy enough to do with the 50-odd test users right now, a potential nightmare when in production. If we can decide which way we want to go, we can figure out the logic to get there. This one may require some more thought. Time to crash on the patio with a cognac and a cigar and let the ideas come.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #12

#14
Thanks, Cory. This thing just may become huge, although I'd rather it didn't. It's hard to give people an advantage if everyone has it. As with most things, time will tell.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #11

#7
Interesting, would that mean you would only like to support the people you choose to support? I hadn't considered that. What should the system do if you wanted to RT, say 6 times, but there were only 3 tweets available that day? Should it ignore 3 RTs or double them up?

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #10

Some people are shy. I got a PM with a GREAT SUGGESTION (capitals intended and well-deserved) from someone who prefers to remain anonymous. OK, I can respect his/her wishes The person suggested that a Tribe should be a tweet-specific thing. They used Elon Musk's tweet as an example. Elon would usually tweet in the Technology Tribe (Assuming he was a member. He isn't). That cookie tweet shouldn't be in that Tribe, it's more suitable for the Lifestyle Tribe. We'll add Tribe selection to each tweet. A simple drop-down selection should do the trick.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #9

#6
Well, @Kevin Pashuk, tucking a feather in your hair is completely out of the question. Re: cooperative retweeting: The multiplicity of effort offers a tremendous push. Imagine what effect several thousand cooperating Tweeps could have.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #8

#6
Well, Kevin Pashuk, tucking a feather in your hair is completely out of the question

Pascal Derrien

7 years ago #7

#4
x times to a select group would be my preference :-)

Kevin Pashuk

7 years ago #6

Like Jim Murray. Does this mean I have to wear a kilt? Seriously, your little project seems to be working wonders for the posts of mine you've tweeted about. Thanks.

Jim Murray

7 years ago #5

Maybe it's too early in the morning but I sort of get this in principle. Having trouble with the implementation. I will read this again AC (after coffee).

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #4

#2
Oh, I think you have plenty of expertise, Pascal Derrien. The coding side is okay we don't need help there. We just want opinions on what we should make the code do. The idea is to have the system RT on your behalf. Would you rather have it tweet X times to a select group and Y times to a larger group, or would you just like to say, send out X number of supporting retweets and have it choose?

David B. Grinberg

7 years ago #3

Nice buzz to begin the week, Paul \. I've also shared in the "beBee in English" hive. Thanks for all YOU do, Paul!

Pascal Derrien

7 years ago #2

I cannot comment with any kind of expertise as this is going a bit over my head I must say but I would like to wish you good luck with the new venture Senor Pablo :-)

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #1

Javier beBee are all mentioned here.

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