OPW CEO Interview -- May 1 -- I've been intrigued with Tribe.net for a while now; 'Craigslist meets Friendster.' Marc Pincus started it not long after Jonathan Abrams started Friendster (purportedly friends). But Marc is handing the CEO's baton to former Pepsi and Proctor and Gamble exec Jan Gullett. I interviewed Jan to find out a little more about Tribe and where he plans to take it. - Mark Brooks

Is Tribe.net a dating site?- Dating is a fairly specific activity and we're a general social
community. Building relationships is at our core, but dating is
only one kind of relationship. We're much broader in scope and
certainly not a dating specialist. We have a local focus and we
help get people together. Knowing who people are is really
critical to knowing if you want to do business with them. We
think people are hungering for relationships with people they can trust
and 'community' relies on people knowing one another.

You mentioned recently
you'd be taking a more proactive approach to marketing, but given that
Tribe.net is a social network, why the need, it grows itself?- We're not as big as other social networks but we have good organic
growth, so additional marketing will accelerate our growth. We
have attractive fundamental metrics that we want to take advantage
of. We've had a nice compound annual growth rate for the last
year now. It just remains to be seen how fast we can step on the
accelerator.

What do you think of Craigslist?- Craigslist is a great service to the community. Tribe.net is
quite different in approach, and people are better off for having both
of us.

Why did you decide to join Tribe?- Tribe.net is a real benefit to the community, it's fun, and I believe
there's a great opportunity for growth. We had an individual who
had cancer and raised $100k from local people through the site. This
just wouldn't have happened if he went out and stood on a street
corner. Helping people pull together to help one another is of
great interest to me.

Is there any similarity between Tribe and Starbucks?- Besides being equally addictive? The reality is we have
incredibly intense usage by our members. The involvement, time
and relationship with the site is really very strong. People
hunger for relationships and friendships and being a part of a larger
social group. There's a hunger to be in groups of people with
similar interests. As we live in more crowded areas, with less
public space and fewer places to hangout...it seems like most of hangouts
have gone by the wayside and are being replaced by commercial real
estate. Starbucks and Borders have become the new local
hangouts. In a way, we're the online version of that.

What's the Caffeine? - Personal satisfaction from high-touch human relationships.

What do you think of the background checks legislation?- In the early days people communicated anonymously online. Now
there's the concept of wanting to be known as a real person online, no
longer wanting to do stuff surreptitiously. I believe in honesty,
and being comfortable being a real person in the online world is
important. For young people, the online world is their
world. It's not artificial for them, not a separate
playground. It's where they live and they want to be associated
with others as real people. That's why we're investing a lot of
time and effort in building out the ability of our users to represent
themselves on the web.

And what of Yub.com's 'affiliate program for everyone' site model?- Amway made a lot of people successful. I would say there's
business promise. But there's the sanctity of social friendships
based on merit and fundamental essence of goodwill. We don't want
to pollute Tribe.net with an external economic motivation. We're
an online hangout...for very good and valid reasons. Gratifying
reasons. Rather than capitalize all out, we'd rather benefit
everyone from the Tribe.net goodwill.

What have you learned from Tribe.net users?- We measured response rates of listings from people with profiles and
those without and the difference is phenomenal. We have actual
proof of the value and leverage of having real people, known in the
Tribe.net community, list items...they get an order of magnitude
greater response rate to their listings. This is at the core of
who we are: providing a rich environment where local people can connect
with each other 'Thin' services run the risk of burnout.

How will Tribe.net make money?- We've put a lot of thought into this. We're a media
business...sponsored tribes, listings and display advertising. These
are just different types of marketing messages which we intend to
monetize.