I did a little digging now that tribe is up again and here are some info & links to explain what has been going on with Tribe.net
From what I understand, there is a very small crew of people keeping Tribe.net alive right now – I’m talking 2 – 4 people if I understand it correctly. They attempted to move the physical location of tribe.net from one set of computers to another, but a series of hardware and social problems have set in. Tangled wires, faulty equipment, politics, frayed nerves, rabid dogs and who knows what else.
I don’t think they succeeded in moving tribe’s servers, and the process of bringing it back online was anything but smooth, so once they got tribe plugged back in it kept crashing cause everyone was hitting it so hard trying to get back on!
Now apparently Darren Mckeeman – Operations Manager @ Tribe.net has resigned,
(read it here from on Darren’s twitter blog: http://twitter.com/tjcrowley ),
apparently because his co-worker Mark Pincus cursed at him:
http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2008/09/keeping-tribe-a.html
Meanwhile DJ Shatter has been helping put tribe back together,
http://people.tribe.net/the-shatter/blog/3e17d424-1c20-4889-ada4-65fd26403b6d
while also planning an escape route; a ning.com site for tribe refugees:
http://triberefugees.ning.com/
and then Shatter and his dog were attacked by a Pitbull:
http://shatter707.livejournal.com/387498.html
and his hands are all messed up.
So its seems like its a miracle that tribe is working at all, and it is also a very real possibility that unless some brilliant, amazing, dedicated hardworking people step-up to the plate, tribe may eventually collapse under its own weight.
If you want to get in on some discussions and be in contact with Mark Pincus:
http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2008/09/we-have-receive.html
Darren Mckeeman
darren@tribe.net
(and here is the official company blog: http://blog.tribe.net/ but don’t know how useful that is.)
Shatter:
http://twitter.com/Shatter242