If Blellow is Twitter for freelancers, TribeHQ is Twitter for professionals.

TribeHQ is one of the latest flavors of microblogging, this time around with a targeted audience of business professionals. Much like LinkedIn became the social network for professionals, TribeHQ is poised to be that resource in microblogging.

Launched by co-founders Paul Jacobs and Tim de Jardine in late 2008 and set up in private beta until just a few weeks ago, TribeHQ is already making waves. I’ve been a user on the site for a few months now, but traffic has certainly picked up now that the site is public and TechCrunch has sent hundreds inbound.

While TribeHQ may look similar to other microblogs in design and function, it does a number of things differently than its peers, including groups, messaging, subscriptions and jobs.

Pre-determined Groups for Users

When you first log on as a user, the idea is to find the tribes that fit in with your profession, that way you can stay connected to your industry and share the knowledge you have with other like-minded users. TribeHQ gives you a nice search box to find groups, but don’t be surprised if your exact field isn’t listed. I found marketing and advertising to be listed in the same group, though both professions lead very different lives.

Most social networking platforms allow users to create the groups, but this organization helps establish some parameters for getting the site started and I wouldn’t be surprised if they open up group creation to the users later on.

Each User has a Cave Wall

Similar to how users have their own wall on Facebook where friends can leave messages, TribeHQ has a similar featured called a Cave Wall. Users can scrawl messages onto your wall as they pass by and you can also reply to messages left behind.

Subscriptions and Allies

Staying connected with content on TribeHQ happens by way of joining a tribe or identifying an individual user as an ally. If you join a group, all the resulting activity will be available from the tribe button on your main home page. If you mark someone as an ally, you will see all of their messages under the ally button, similar to how your home screen on Twitter displays tweets from all of those you follow.

Posting Jobs

Any user may create a profile for their company and post jobs to TribeHQ for free. If you fill out your user profile “properly,” TribeHQ will even try to match you up with the jobs you may be interested in. On each job posting page, users can post messages to the company who is hiring, opening up a dialogue not generally present in the jobseeker environment.

Outside of these new features, there are several components you will be entirely familiar with:

• each user has their own profile page
• all messages must be posted in 140 characters or less

I’ve joined five tribes so far: Marketing / Advertising, Social Media Specialists, Web Designers, Bloggers and Entrepreneurs. Some tribes are really taking off in terms of conversations, though others are running slightly more stale.

As more users find the site and the team continues to work through suggestions and new features, I hope we see this site grow and get a chance to see its true potential. If you decide to join, you can find me on TribeHQ as miketempleton.