Bettermode's Year in Review — 2019

What a year 2019 has been for the world of online communities! We believe the remarkable shift towards building customer-facing brand communities on own platform has been a key element of this year (backed by a study by community roundtable).

Also, not to forget Facebook’s newfound focus on Groups and the big boost in its importance to push it to the level of ‘friends and family’.For Tribe, it has always been about democratizing the technology backbone required for community building.

We are fortunate enough to have put together a team that absolutely loves how the internet has transformed the way people connect with each other and wants to empower businesses to foster human connections.Our journey is still in its nascent phase, but we’re definitely on our way to make a dent in the online community space.

As a thank you note to our esteemed clients and the tribal team paranoid about delivering the best possible community experience, let’s look at Tribe’s year in review.

Finding the Tribal soul

Although at Tribe, we always knew we wanted to channel human connection with the power of the online communities, the manifestation of such connections and the result can vary widely. This year was great in terms of refining how we want to be known, our vision, mission, and values as a brand.To put the essence of all the brainstorming in a succinct manner here is something we truly stand for:

The driving force behind building the Tribe Platform is our passion and human DNA to shape delightful experiences that encourage human interaction with one another to foster an engaged community.

This is something we live by and when we look inwards, it is imperative that the practice must start with our company. So, we're giving this platform everything we have, inviting people who share the same vision to join us to do some of the best works of their lives and in the process make ourselves better.

More Tribes than ever

Tribe is vertical agnostic and doesn’t dictate how you should build your own community. Instead, Tribe gives the freedom and flexibility of delivering a tailor-made community experience to your customers, audiences, and fans.

This applies to a wide spectrum of community owners -- right from software and marketplace companies to established independent creators monetizing the expertize via subscription-based membership.

Tribe, unlike conventional community or forum software, draws the bulk of its inspiration and best practices from the popular social media platforms that have changed user behavior and online networking in the last 10 years.At this point, Tribe as a community platform is well-positioned to meet the demands of the modern web users and businesses.

Being a platform, we are currently focused on delivering the best possible networking, engagement, and content consumption experience (our big update is coming in 2020). The rest of the features that are not core components of an online community will be delivered by specialized third-party integrations.With this philosophy, we see many businesses place their trust on Tribe.

And coupled with our free plan launched in August, we are witnessing explosive growth.

Preferred community partner for both emerging and big brands

Although Tribe welcomes companies of any size, many big brands started working with us this year. Here are some notable names:

• Accenture
• Top Hat
• Leboncoin
• Skyscanner
• Decathlon
• Convertkit
• Mindvalley

A good number of big names are going to start working with us from 2020.

Finding love from the creators

Apart from the enterprises, we are well accepted by the ever-growing base of creators who are building their communities around their courses, videos, podcasts, newsletters, and more.Our solution still needs some more alignment in terms of integration and core features of the platform to better serve the creators. We are looking to address them in the future.

Platform enhancement

This year we released numerous new features and platform upgrades. The core platform is built with a vision to support many apps and integrations for diverse use cases.

Our near-term goal is to move towards a no-code community platform that would allow you to build your community like drawing on canvas by easily arranging pre-built components.Everything from Zapier integration and Webhooks to Intercom, Amplitude, SEO Boost -- all are geared towards helping the clients with engagement, marketing, and retention.

Tribe released 22 apps and integrations only in 2019. Currently, Tribe is offered in 16 different languages -- right from Spanish and French to Arabic and Chinese. We were able to achieve this simply because of our highly motivated users who are actively maintaining the internationalization and collaborating via a group dedicated to Tribe translators.

Tribal ritual is all about having fun

Our Tribal team embarked on frequent team dinners and late-night brainstorming along with off-site sessions leaving the hustle-bustle of Toronto. Those have resulted in the implementation of some of the key features and planning for the upcoming approach towards the structure of the community platform.

Giving back to the community

We strongly believe that a small group of people determined to solve a problem can truly make a significant impact on the world if they are supported by the right technology. The same goes for the non-profits that are improving the lives of millions with sheer grit.To support these pillars of the global community, this year we also opened up our startup and non-profit program that allows promising organizations to avail the premium with a 50% discount.

Next up: 2020

We’re truly excited to welcome 2020 as a major revamp would be released and it is going to bring a positive impact on millions of end-users who would be better equipped to connect, inspire, and share. Apart from that, the alignment of the platform to deliver a robust mobile strategy is another major upcoming milestone.

Next year will also see Tribe enable developers to build valuable apps based on the platform’s SDK to help both creators and businesses. More direct integrations with enterprises are also in the pipeline to help businesses connect the community in existing processes.Overall, there are going to be many new clients building interesting communities and solving unique problems.

We are delighted to be a part of their journey and blessed to have the opportunity for building human connections.Happy holidays and happy new year!