Donut Freakout: Mark Pincus from Zynga (and formerly of Tribe) Revisited

Pincus and friend Tom Cole, Burning Man 2005

Back in the day we interviewed Mark Pincus, the founder of the beloved Burning Man social network known as Tribe.net.  In its hey day Tribe was pretty damn awesome rivaling the likes of Friendster and MySpace. Its appeal was to those of alternative lifestyles and artists with the Burning Man tribe being the largest on the site.

Pincus told BURNcast in the old interview we dug up featured above, that his first burn was in 2003 and not long after his return from the playa Tribe launched.  At the time he had great things to say about our beloved community (drink!) which you'll hear in the interview and also read in this blog post dated September 28, 2004:

"what i love most about BM is how 'present' it is. there is little sense of time other than guessing dayparts by sun position. there is no agenda as you have nothing you need to do or accomplish in a given day other than very basic requirements like water and shade. BM is a community and place that fosters creativity, where weird and random are celebrated, conformity and judgement non-existent." (sic)

The problem with Tribe is that it wasn't profitable and eventually Pincus sold the network to go on and spearhead Zynga, the hugely successful social gaming company that developed Facebook games such as Farmville.  It was this venture that got him on Forbes Billionaires List this past March.

In a recent interview Pincus told Vanity Fair why -- at least to him -- Tribe was a total fail:

 “On the Web, whenever you have an open-ended community, it will basically turn into porn, and with Tribe, the hard-core Burning Man crowd uploaded pictures of themselves naked. My girlfriend at the time was this blonde, preppy, granola Marina Girl, and she was frightened off so fast by hairy, freaky guys who were sending her pictures of their balls.”

Burning Man 1997. Balls courtesy of Paul Addis
(Source: Wanda Power/Laughing Squid)

While we've never personally had this issue on Tribe per se, it does bring a whole new meaning to the term "great balls of fire".

Ba-da-bump!