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Rumors of Tribe re-hiring its founding prez, followed by news that NBC wants to buy Tribe, set Mark Rumer's mind to work about NBC's motives. The founder and CTO of Occam Networks slices his razor across the rumored deal with the following analysis.

As a long-time tribe user, and entrepreneur, the NBC deal (if real) indicates a positioning within NBC to cozy up to a more left-wing demographic. In fact, severing their partnership w/MS, investing in YouTube, and grabbing iVillage (with their respective demographic) shows a decided interest in new generation free thinkers at a point in time that the US is starting to realize Fox is a caricature of the Right. Media tends to oscillate in this manner as demographic opportunity presents itself.

This would also sort of align with the rumor that Tribe was looking to bring back Mark Pincus...not that would ever happen logically in a startup environment, but it was clear that the current management did not know how to grow its eclectic user base and instead embarked upon the systematic alienation of those most sensitive to censorship through the implementation of progressively restrictive terms of use (a vain attempt to make the service more acceptable to a new class of advertisers.)

In any event, this is somewhat interesting from a media perspective.

Earlier: Exclusive: NBC is buying Tribe — but why?
Earlier: Rumormonger: Tribe wants old chief back