| The Official Tribe Fan Club: WHAT WAS IT? |
Update May 2011…
Clarification on the Fan Club
We have been advised from our Facebook team that there are many enquiries about joining the Fan Club.
This is certainly on the agenda to discuss with head office and we’ll post any information as soon as we know.
In the meantime, for the sake of our archives the following represents the heritage of what the Fan Club used to be and it might be a good idea for anyone interested to post on the Facebook page any suggestions of what they would like a new Fan Club to be so that these views can be presented to head office.
The old Fan Club (heritage) – what was it…
Many members signed up over the years from all around the world to become members of the Official Tribe Fan Club – with members as far as from the UK to the USA, Germany to Australia, Slovenia to Sweden and more.
Members receive special benefits such as exclusive chats with members of cast and the makers of The Tribe, access to unique collectors’ item merchandise, a 10% discount on Tribe merchandise, a welcome letter from Raymond Thompson (Creator and Executive Producer) amongst much else.
I am alreeady a member – when is the next Fan Club event?
We have some exciting plans coming up for existing members of the Official Tribe Fan Club including some online chats with members of cast and with the creative force behind the series, Raymond Thompson.
We will be emailing members soon with details so please check your emails for more information.
How do I join the Fan Club?
We are no longer accepting new members of the Official Tribe Fan Club.
The Fan Club will continue to be run for existing members but it will not be possible to create a new membership any more.
Why? What is happening?
The aim in having an official Fan Club has always been to create a club to allow the community of Tribe fans around the world to have an outlet to express and enjoy everything to do with The Tribe.
As time goes on, however, we feel that it is better to evolve and change and to embrace some of the many exciting technological developments, which will provide an even better vehicle in the long-term for Tribe fans to enjoy The Tribe.
For example, the Official Tribe Fan Club has had over 75,000 people become members around the world and you can well imagine the sheer volume of emails and correspondence that comes in. This makes it nearly impossible to keep on top of everything and reply in a timely manner. Our philosophy has always been to have real people running the Fan Club – meaning it is not automated and members do not receive computerized responses from unemotive servers. The correspondence sent to the Fan Club is replied to by the very real people members of the team but the bigger the Fan Cliub gets, the more difficult it is to reply to all the emails that come in.
People who joined up as members of the Fan Club in the early days may remember that fans used to get Tribe badges, sets of postcards and a real physical Tribe fanzine magazine sent out (all for free back then!).
However we believe that the days of a “traditional” style Fan Club are numbered due to exciting technological developments and in the future, content sent out to fans is likely to be digitial and delivered to platforms such as mobile phones, Ipods and MP3 players, through an online game, handheld computers and digital devices – whereas in the past it would have been things like badges or magazines posted out.
So the existing Fan Club will continue to exist and members will continue to receive benefits by being members of the Fan Club – it’s just that looking ahead to the future, we feel there are some wonderful possibilities to embrace through technology and that these will be a great vehicle to allow the community of Tribe fans to enjoy The Tribe in years to come.
The Tribe Wikia
One of the technologies that we are excited about is the phenomenon of Wikis. If you are not familiar with this term, it refers to sites such as Wikipedia where visitors to the site are able to create and edit content themselves.
It has been drawn to our attention that there is a The Tribe Wiki being run on the popular serviceWikia.com. The creator of the Wiki, “Mall Rat” has asked for help to create and grow the Wiki, which is in its early days, and if you are interested, why not visit the Wiki and add some content to it.
We love the concept and spirit of Wikis and this is one example of a technology that will allow fans to share a collective experience and for the community of Tribe fans to evolve the content of The Tribe Wiki as time progresses.
In many ways this is a concept with parallels to “The Tribe” itself – where the users of the Wiki will be creating a new world inspired by The Tribe!
Perhaps one day there will be multilingual language versions of The Tribe Wiki reflecting the different countries where The Tribe is shown. It’s up to the people who visit and use the Wiki to edit and evolve the Wiki, so it will be interesting to see how it all develops,