Tsū Review: Social network with 90% revshare
Forward: Tsū stylize the “u” in their name but in an effort to keep things simple, hereafter I simply refer to the company as “Tsu” (pronounced “sue”). /end forward
There is no information on the Tsu website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The Tsu website domain (“tsu.co”) was first registered on July 21st 2010. The registration details were last updated on the 28th of January 2014, possibly indicating that this is when the current owner(s) took control of the domain.
Unfortunately the domain registration is set to private, so no details of ownership are disclosed.
A listing on Angel List, an investor website, reveals the company founders to be Sebastian Sobczak (Chief Executive Manager), Drew Ginsburg (VP of Business Development) and Thibault Boullenger.
The listing cites Tsu as being based out of New York and if it’s to be believed, Tsu has had $8 million invested into it this year. Sobczak is the sole credited investor.
I wasn’t able to find an MLM history for either of Tsu’s co-founders, indicating that this is their first MLM venture either as an affiliate or as company owners.
Read on for a full review of the Tsu MLM business opportunity.
The Tsu Product Line
Tsu’s product is a social network platform co-founder Sebastian Sobczak claims has been six years in the making:
From the company’s website,
Tsū is a free social media payment platform. With tsū, users can monetize all social content.
Users can be subsidized by 3rd parties (advertisers, partners and sponsors) while socializing, searching, listening to music, transacting, etc.
Joining the Tsu social network as a user (affiliate) is free.
The Tsu Compensation Plan
The Tsu compensation plan revolves around users publishing content which Tsu then monetizes (primarily with advertising).
If a tsū user’s post is viewed, that post creates economics – at the very least an advertisement is served alongside that post which is revenue.
Tsū simply arranges these revenues to trickle to the users as royalties via our algorithm.
This algorithm splits 90% of the revenue generated by monetization of published content with Tsu’s user-base.
In its simplest form, tsū is a payment platform attached to a user-owned social network and we are simply guiding payments to users based on royalties collected from 3rd parties.
Revenue is paid out using an infinite unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team. If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
Commissions are paid out using what Tsu refer to as “the rule of infinite thirds”.
33% of the total revenue collected is paid out to the affiliate whose social profile the monetized content was originally posted on. Their upline, the affiliate who recruited them, is paid 33% of the remaining 66%.
This leaves 45.22% of the revenue raised, of which 33% is paid to the next upline affiliate (the affiliate who recruited the affiliate who received the second 33% payment).
In this manner, the system continues to pay upline via the unilevel, paying out 33% of whatever percentage of the revenue remains. Eventually this sum will be rounded up or down until the entire 90% revenue sum is paid out.
Joining Tsu
All users of the Tsu social network are affiliates. There is no cost to join.
Conclusion
Another MLM social network attempting to monetize user content and activity?
Apart perhaps from their “rule of infinite thirds” compensation plan, Tsu doesn’t bring anything new to the MLM social network niche.
We’ve seen countless companies launch in this niche and ultimately go anywhere. This is primarily for two reasons.
The first is that direct monetization of user content and activity as it is doesn’t bring in all that much revenue. It might for Tsu, considering they skim 10% off company-wide, but for the average user who is restricted to commissions rolling up from their unilevel team, it isn’t going to be much.
Split it into thirds and it’s less again. The idea is obviously that you have a massive downline pumping up fraction amounts to you, but aside from those who get in early and have massive numbers of affiliates under them – this isn’t going to reflective of your typical Tsu user.
The other reason is a lack of participation. Adding a monetization component to a social network sounds good in theory, but if that’s the sole innovation the company is bringing to the niche, people don’t migrate.
Why? The network is usually a sub-par clone of an existing network or 1:1 at best. In order to be successful a network would need to attract people who gave a damn about earning a few cents as well as those who don’t.
Those who don’t, evidently the bulk of social network users given the long list of failed MLM social network startups, won’t bother migrating because all there’s no need to.
One need only look at the Facebook privacy debacles and continued use of the platform to realize just how reluctant social network users are to migrate. Google Plus is another good example.
What typically happens in a social network MLM is it launches, a few early adopters spam the crap out of it (“it’s free to join, you’ve got nothing to lose!”), the network fills with affiliates chatting to eachother about how wonderful the network is for a few months and then it dies off.
Organic adoption, which is all that really counts, is next to 0.
In the absence of bringing anything new to the social network niche, I’m not seeing how Tsu is going to be any different.
(Minor correction, the website is Tsu.co not .com)
While I share Oz’s scepticism for MLM social networks, how many times does an idea need to fail before it runs out of suckers to invest in it? But I’m not sure MLM is the best lens to view Tsu.co.
From what I’ve been able to see there is no fee to join (which Oz pointed out) and there isn’t any form of back end up sell. The alleged income opportunity requires no purchase or investment. Unless that changes this isn’t really a MLM.
The pitch here seems to be “use our social network and we’ll cut you in on our income.” That isn’t the worst offer I’ve ever heard (I’m looking at you, moldering corpse of Ripplin and soon to be equally moribund IQKonnect).
Is it a viable marketing strategy? I have no clue, the quality of their website is more important then the small handful of shekels they offer people to use it.
The real danger here is that their monetization strategy could attract the exact type of people most social network users are happy to block/ignore.
I’ve read enough “how to market on facebook” ebooks to know that the people looking at their friends list as their “warm market” are not the kind of people I enjoy socializing with. I don’t believe I’m alone in that sentiment.
Tsu may turn out to be an interesting social experiment. So far no social network with a comp plan has ever done anything but explode on impact with reality.
It’s quite simply a critically flawed business model, you can’t pay people with their own money to make you go “viral.” But that doesn’t seem to be what Tsu is promising to do, they’re going to pay you with “their” money (which you help them make).
The interesting thing becomes, can viral growth be bought?
Thanks for catching that. Force of habit.
As I’m reading it they have plans to roll out music services, payment processor etc. etc. Whether they will eventuate remains to be seen but in the interim they’re definitely using a unilevel compensation plan with a service.
That said I have trouble identifying their retail offering. If they combine third-party services to the network then the issue is still that 100% of users are affiliates.
The commissions paid out are likely to be insignificant enough so as not to attract regulatory attention, but from an academic standpoint this is a pretty grey (and somewhat interesting) area I think.
It’s not a “traditional” MLM but is still a company with affiliates using an MLM compensation plan.
They’re using an embedded Colbert report Youtube video on the front page as part of the promotion.
I don’t think they have permission and fair use doesn’t apply to commercial promotion.
Looking less legit on the face of it.
On tsū, users own their content and own their network, therefore they own the royalties generated from advertising, sponsorship and partnership dollars wrapped around their content.
Additionally if any users came to the platform via a user’s short code or invitation, then that user will in perpetuity earn a portion of the economics of the newly invited individual and their social network on tsū.
Right now you need an invite to join this up and coming social network. I just found a generic user like (Ozedit: spam removed) and created a profile.
Hopefully this catches on, then anyone in on the ground floor will have a nice passive income to build on for simply posting.
Users own their own content irrespective of where they publish it (assuming they own the rights to it in the first place).
And what’s this crap about users owning the network? The co-founders own Tsu, nobody else. You aren’t buying into the business by signing up as a social network user, what hogwash.
Please don’t post your recruitment spam again.
Not for posting someone else’s content, they don’t.
People want content, not merely LINK to content. And the established social networks are too well entrenched to allow any new comers to flourish, no matter how much revenue they promise to share.
Revenue-sharing social network had been around since 2007… Yuwie is a name nobody remembers. And those who do not study history… are doomed to repeat it.
The only social networks that last are ones which allow us to communicate in new ways. People use snapchat, for example, because it’s unique onto itself. They use linkedin to communicate with professionals and find jobs.
What are they going to use TSU for that they could t do somewhere else? Now, if a well established and successful social network offered a revenue share, I might be interested. But, this is never going to work.
RIP, TSU
You can add peoplestring, wowzza, flixya, friendswin, hellohello, revver and guba, to name a few others.
The only way previous attempts have gained any traction whatsoever is by having “upgrades” available, but in the end they all failed.
Unlike most of the previous failures, at least we can verify some of what is said, such as LeAnn Rimes acknowledging that she is a member: twitter.com/leannrimes/statuses/525874300746993665
Naturally, stuff like that doesn’t guarantee it will attain any real level of success, but at least it doesn’t seem to be an outright fraud like so many before it.
The incentivized social network model has so many inherent flaws, it will be interesting to see if Tsu actually accomplishes anything.
the business model is flawed. there will be a tendency for members to just post, like, share etc stuff they don’t own and more importantly stuff that is not even relevant to their personality. this drastically reduces the quality of the content.
if tsu is using the same smart advertising system used by google and facebook, the system will not be able to accurately tell a members true personality thus leaving advertisers wondering if they tapped the correct audience.
plus, people will be joining to earn and not necessarily patronize the products/services of the advertisers. in the long run, advertisers may find it tsu’s ad system ineffective and go back to FB and google leaving tsu members staring at a blank wall.
tsu is MLM friendly but i don’t see it as an effective platform for advertisers. this is where the flaw lies. they poured so much effort to reward the tsu users where the hand that will feed them aims to earn from all of them.
If history repeats itself. My feeling on this is they will get a bunch of people in, get them engaged, then introduce an “upgrade”. 20% will buy into it, they will milk that 20% for 9 months then the “guys at the top” will take the money and run.
Looks like anonymous users, non-members of tsu cannot explore tsu network (they need to sign-up to see any content).
So – why to join blindly something I cannot evaluate before? Other popular social networks allow anonymous users.
I have screenshot everything I have to say as proof, as well as acquired a collection of inept often badly written responses from Tsu support regarding very serious issues.
Tsu is overrun with porn, under-age users, cheating with Auto-Detect-New Profile Harvesters and Scrapers, and its own spam bots and mysterious Superstars to pad its page views to advertisers.
Tsu support does not react to sexual harassment of women by other users through e-mail. Intrusive sexual invitations Tsu says are not considered malicious if you cannot prove the mail was sent to anyone else.
Women are penalized for attempting to defend themselves against sexual harassment and are themselves labeled malicious for doing so.
Tsu support makes it the user’s responsibility to report porn and hard core porn. I did this about two hours a day along with constantly blocking porn posters and porn-bot women accounts of dubious ownership.
Tsu Community VP Brian Tignor writes that if you see porn it is your own fault for following porn posters. This is absolutely not true, and admits to the constant porn which is readily available and responded to by profiles I have seen stating ages of 13-16.
Porn is profitable to Tsu for page view statistics to show advertisers. Porn ranges from very young Asian girls in Playboy/Penthouse staged photos, in bed with their teddy bears, or licking ice cream cones, to explicit sexual performances showing all gentalia.
“Original Content” is lousy photos mostly, and chronic selfie posters of two basic types.
The banal: selfies of your every meal, cup of coffee, pics shot at the sky, pics shot through the car windshield, pics of your office parking lot..
The vain: girl and women selfies shot in underwear in the bed or bath, booty selfies in thong underwear, and selfies in general of the body designed to appeal to either women or men in a sexually stimulating fashion.
This is “original content.”
It is a waste of time to post informative and educational original articles as there are apparently fewer English speaking users on Tsu than there are users who only speak broken English, but are fluent in Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Asian dialects. Even the English speakers are too busy scrounging for pennies to read a sincere post.
A typical “comment” on a quality blog post 1.5 hours in the making is “NICE” or “Wah g Wah” or just “WAH.”
Posting and account facilities are primitive and have not been upgraded. Anyone can scrape your friend list, especially auto-follow bots which send your friends auto-friend requests, soon creating an inbred community of friends who never see each other’s posts because mutual spam bots stand between friends in feed with hours and hours of spam images of resorts, waterfalls, sunsets, sunrises, mountains, river gorges, animals and fabulous travel pics none of which are labeled for identification or location.
The general Tsu community is too poor to buy anything nor are they interested in buying anything from Tsu advertisers. So there is no real ad revenue other than pay-per-page views.
The extreme number of fake spamming accounts run by Tsu-Cheat Apps and/or Tsu itself are the amazing number of page views for which advertisers are paying.
Further, what media corporation can pay 90% of ad revenue to users and survive with such a business plan?
It is impossible to produce 24 quality original blog posts a day and interact in comments for hours. For six months of this work I rose to revenue earnings of 0.13-0.24 cents a day.
Because I believe the platform will cave in before I reached the $100 withdrawal point, I transferred my daily earnings to Tsu Charities every morning.
Some of these are in total non-compliance with the basic Laws of the State where they are registered, not posting their ID numbers or other Notice of Solicitation of Funds. Some do not have corporation articles on file in their state of origin which match the stated purpose for which they are collecting money on Tsu.
Tsu apparently has no Legal Department which maintains adequate information on charity solicitors. Some Tsu charities indicate a website which is merely a Word Press page “under construction” and such charities state locations such as Netherlands, though they cannot be found on any list for the country.
All cash transfers member to member or to charities are subject to a 3% service charge by Tsu.
Tsu allows rampant posting of Face Book hate posts, depicting urination onto the FB Logo, smashing FB with mallets, or blowing up FB with IEDs or other artillery.
Any post which is objectionable will remain published unless reported by a User, and then the post may or may not be removed at Tsu discretion.
The last straw came when I found a post in my feed from a habitual porn poster I had long ago blocked.
It read, across the face of a dirty old man, “See you later, alligator…in a while Paedophile.” Most Middle-Eastern users do not understand what this means…so it slips by as unremarkable.
Tsu did not remove this post and deemed me malicious for protesting its presence in a community full of porn and teenagers.
This house of cards is doomed.
So apparently Tsu is getting rebooted with an
Seems they want to combine Facebook, Amazon and YouTube.
Problem is those already exist and are quite successful at what they do.
The only difference is the revenue share. But paying content creators puts the business side of things upfront.
It’s not a good look for an audience. And I think that’s why these transparently money focused social networks always fail.
Obviously every other social network and YT/IG etc. are also profit driven, they’re just much better at presenting a “no strings attached” front to audiences.
Anyway, expect another Tsu invite spam tidal wave at some point. If the new business model is MLM we’ll have an updated Tsu review up once it’s made public.