There’s a new gunslinger in social media town…and it aims to share its revenue with users. You no longer have to serve as unpaid content (and money) generators for Facebook and Twitter — with tsu, you get a piece of the action.
New Yorker Sebastian Sobczak is the brain behind Tsu, and his vision was to create a social media site where users were fairly compensated for content. Tsu uses the same monetization model as Facebook, such as highly targeted ads, but only 10 percent of the take is kept by the company; the rest is shared with its user base via a payment platform. Fifty percent of the remaining revenue goes to the user/content creator, with the rest going to something that resembles a pyramid scheme: the network that surrounds the user. Payments are made to the person who invited the user to join tsu, the person who invited that person to join tsu, and so on.
Tsu’s analytics page shows content creators and their networks the pieces that generated the most revenue via targeted ads, and the status of their bank accounts. When a user accumulates more than $100, he or she can cash it in or donate to a charity that is enrolled in the network.
It’s particularly attractive to artists of all types (and, in fact, was primarily created for them), and counts 50 Cent, William Shatner, LeAnn Rimes, Miami Heat’s Luol Deng and U.S. track and field Olympian Doc Patton as early adopters.
Will it stick around? Too early to tell. Tsu was launched in late 2014, and new membership continues to be by invitation only. Obviously, investors at Sancus Capital Prive believe tsu has promise, as they led the initial $7 million funding round.
Do you tsu? Let us know your experiences.