DriveTribe - online car community from Clarkson/May/Hamond

DriveTribe - online car community from Clarkson/May/Hamond

Author
Discussion

Hub

6,435 posts

198 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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Well, it is closing -

https://drivetribe.com/p/dear-drivetribe-community...

A lot of people cheesed off that their content is about to be deleted...

Spleen

5,453 posts

121 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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I must admit I never really got it.

carl_w

9,184 posts

258 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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Hub said:
Well, it is closing -

https://drivetribe.com/p/dear-drivetribe-community...

A lot of people cheesed off that their content is about to be deleted...
My understanding is that it relied on unpaid people to create content for the "exposure" of being published.

Blaming its demise on the chip shortage is desperate though.

jon-

16,509 posts

216 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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Not the biggest shock, "In 2018 it was reported that drivetribe had lost £12.5m in its first two years of operation, losing £8.3m in 2017 and £4.2m in 2016."

anonymous-user

54 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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I read that it lost £21 million in the first four years, how on earth is that possible?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9179...

Was it designed to be a social media platform for car owners?, surely YouTube and Facebook are doing this already, better for free?

jon-

16,509 posts

216 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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Joey Deacon said:
Was it designed to be a social media platform for car owners?, surely YouTube and Facebook are doing this already, better for free?
That's the problem car throttle worked out and then changed their business model just as drive tribe was being invented.

samoht

5,717 posts

146 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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I think it was a decent idea, car enthusiasm supports a pretty big ecosystem of performance cars, advertising, magazines, books, community websites such as PH, youtube channels, podcasts etc etc. It wasn't obviously impossible to launch a community-based website centred on cars, especially given the colossal profile of the "Top Gear Three" to drive traffic, not to mention all the other respected journos they briefly commissioned to contribute and promote it.

They just missed the mark by failing to launch it in a fit state to actually work as an effective social network of any kind, due to a slew of design, implementation and stability failures over the critical launch window. Over the past five years they made efforts to improve, but it was always too little, too late to reignite the community. If anything I'm surprised they stuck it out as long as this.

As I said up-thread five years ago,
samoht said:
Ultimately, Drivetribe had a window of opportunity to fulfil its potential. In December, everyone with an interest in cars knew that Clarkson, Hammond and May were launching a new community site, and was interested to try it out. They came, they posted their fav car photo, they overloaded the servers, and now they have nearly all left.

RDMcG

19,153 posts

207 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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It required you to be on Facebook when it started as I recall. I took a quick look and did not want to be on FB and that was that. Did not know it was still around.

TheAngryDog

12,407 posts

209 months

Monday 10th January 2022
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I never used it, so won't miss it.

abzmike

8,385 posts

106 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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Funny I was just thinking about DT yesterday. Thinking, but I didn’t log in. I uploaded one picture in the early days, but it really felt that you needed to be some sort of ‘creator’ to get anything it of it. No real community (the Tribes didn’t make sense), no proper news or discussions, and a horrible site to use, despite the millions spent on building it.
PH is basic, but it works - there’s a lesson there somewhere.

Carlososos

976 posts

96 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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Is the you tube channel going too? Some of the stuff on there was terrible but a couple were ok.

HorneyMX5

5,309 posts

150 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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The standard socials are staying. Drivetribe has 2 million subs in YouTube so will earn some decent revenue still.

Sixpackpert

4,559 posts

214 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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Carlososos said:
Is the you tube channel going too? Some of the stuff on there was terrible but a couple were ok.
No, Hammond is keeping that going apparently. New video yesterday explaining what would be on it. Hammond driving the dragster again being one of the things.

MrBig

2,694 posts

129 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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Well I'm going to go against the grain and say that its a shame. I will concede that I haven't used it in years and the clickbait-y nature of a lot of it really peed me off. But, the concept was a good idea, I'm pleased there are folks out there willing to try new ideas, go up against the big boys and try to bring something fresh to the motoring community.

It was poorly executed in many ways, but its failure will only serve to dissuade similar future endeavours which is a shame.

rampageturke

2,622 posts

162 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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Joey Deacon said:
I read that it lost £21 million in the first four years, how on earth is that possible?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9179...

Was it designed to be a social media platform for car owners?, surely YouTube and Facebook are doing this already, better for free?
The venture capital creator branded it as the "Facebook for Car enthusiasts"

That alone was a massive red flag that ended up being true. The TG trio accepted good cash to be onboard and promote it a bit, it was never their project.

All the gear, and no idea.

lb3nson

811 posts

89 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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So much potential wasted. There was no substance to alot of the stuff on there and the community side just didn’t work. Surprised it stayed around for so long!

M1C

1,833 posts

111 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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I can't say i'm surprised to be honest.

I, for one, never 'got it'. I feel like it didn't really know what it wanted to be? Or if it did....it didn't make me feel interested enough in it to stick with it.

A bit sorry if it means some people are losing their jobs because of it going.

anonymous-user

54 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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rampageturke said:
The TG trio accepted good cash to be onboard and promote it a bit, it was never their project.
I wonder how many of the tens of millions spent on this project went to them? Seems like they may have been the only winners in this whole thing.

Megaflow

9,420 posts

225 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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M1C said:
I can't say i'm surprised to be honest.

I, for one, never 'got it'. I feel like it didn't really know what it wanted to be? Or if it did....it didn't make me feel interested enough in it to stick with it.

A bit sorry if it means some people are losing their jobs because of it going.
Sums it up for me. The website was one of the most in-user friendly sites I ever came across.

Somebody asked the question above, did it need a Facebook account, yes, when it first launched a Facebook account was the only way to register. They soon saw the error of the ways with that one.

UTH

8,939 posts

178 months

Tuesday 11th January 2022
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Sixpackpert said:
Carlososos said:
Is the you tube channel going too? Some of the stuff on there was terrible but a couple were ok.
No, Hammond is keeping that going apparently. New video yesterday explaining what would be on it. Hammond driving the dragster again being one of the things.
Will May still be doing the FoodTribe YT channel? Not everyone's cup of tea but some of it was quite funny.